Malcolm Gladwell will be The Cooper Union's 152nd Commencement Speaker

POSTED ON: March 22, 2010

Celebrated journalist and best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell will deliver the keynote address at The Cooper Union's 152nd Commencement.

A celebrated journalist and best-selling author, Gladwell has been a staff writer with The New Yorker magazine since 1996 and is the author of four books. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference, (2000), Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005), and Outliers: The Story of Success (2008) were all number one on The New York Times bestsellers list. His latest book, What the Dog Saw (2009) is a compilation of stories published in The New Yorker.

From 1987 to 1996, Gladwell was a reporter with The Washington Post, where he covered business, science, and then served as the newspaper's New York City bureau chief. He graduated from the University of Toronto, Trinity College, with a degree in history. He was born in England, grew up in rural Ontario, and now lives in New York City.

Gladwell is a National Magazine Award winner, and in 2005 his success earned him a place among Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People. Among his other notable awards are the New York Public Library's Lion Award (2010) and the American Sociological Association's Award for Excellence for his reporting of social issues (2007).

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.