Photo Courtesy of Harvard Law School

Randall Kennedy, Princeton alumnus and current Harvard Law School professor, has been named the appointed speaker for Princeton University’s 2016 Baccalaureate ceremony. One of Princeton’s oldest traditions, the Baccalaureate ceremony is an end-of-year interfaith service in the University Chapel. This coming year’s event is scheduled for May 29.

Kennedy earned his A.B. in history from Princeton in 1977 and attended the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He earned his J.D from Yale Law School in 1982.

Kennedy served as a law clerk for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the United States Court of Appeals and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court. He is also a member of the American Law Institute, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Association. His writings and research interests focus on the intersection of racial conflict and legal institutions.

His most recent books include “For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action and the Law” (2013); “The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency” (2011); “Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal” (2008); “Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption” (2003); and the controversial bestseller “Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word” (2002).