CNN host Christiane Amanpour to speak at USC commencement

Journalist Christiane Amanpour will address USC’s graduating class as the 2012 commencement speaker on May 11, the Daily Trojan has learned. The speech will take place in Alumni Park.

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Currently, Amanpour serves as the chief international correspondent for CNN International and as the global affairs anchor for ABC News. This spring she will begin hosting Amanpour, an interview television program on CNN.

Amanpour, who spoke at Harvard University in 2010, first gained prominence when she reported on the Persian Gulf War as an international correspondent for CNN in 1990. Since then, she has covered war, famine, genocide and natural disasters.

Her accolades include an inaugural Television Academy Award, nine News and Documentary Emmys and four George Foster Peabody Awards.

Amanpour is also noted for exclusive interviews with world leaders such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the presidents of Afghanistan, Sudan and Syria and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. She secured the only interview with former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and an exclusive with the late Col. Moammar Gadhafi of Libya, according to ABC News.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, she was the first international correspondent to interview Tony Blair, then-British prime minister; Jacques Chirac, then-French president; and Pervez Musharraf, then-Pakistani president.

Past USC commencement speakers include Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, former USCPresident Steven B. Sample and former Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.