NEWS: Updated: Remnick '81 to address seniors at Class Day

BY LOULLY SANEY Staff Writer

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and editor of The New Yorker David Remnick ’81 will speak to the Class of 2013 at Class Day this spring, the Class Day committee announced Thursday afternoon.

Remnick began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post immediately after graduation, joined The New Yorker in 1992 and has served as its editor since 1998. While at the University, he worked for both the University Press Club and the Nassau Weekly.

In the announcement sent to seniors designed like a cover of The New Yorker, Class Day committee members Lily Alberts ’13, Caroline Hanamirian ’13 and Grayden Holubar ’13 pointed to Remnick’s “witty humor” as a reason for his selection.

“Princeton is nothing but a fantastic memory for me,” Remnick said, adding that he has “nothing but affection and deep feelings,” for the University and that the selection was an “enormous honor.”

Remnick said that he was contacted last week with a request to be the 2013 Class Day speaker, and accepted upon confirming that he would not have to give a “two-hour speech.”

At the University, Remnick, a comparative literature major, said he studied what his father described as “fancy English.” He described himself as a “lit nerd” during his undergraduate years.

Alongside several of his peers, Remnick also helped found the Nassau Weekly during his junior year.

“There is something about journalism — about getting out of the house, seeing things, learning things, talking to people and getting yourself out of yourself that was always very appealing to me,” Remnick explained.

He said that his interest in journalism developed even before he came to the University. He compared the founding of the Nassau Weekly to “that moment in an old ’30s or ’40s movie when kids get together and want to put on a play.”

Remnick was not in an eating club, explaining that at the time he was opposed to the notion of the clubs and lived in Wilson College during his junior and senior year. Looking back at the beliefs he held when he was a teenager in college, Remnick explained that he could not justify why he was opposed to the eating clubs as an institution at the time.

Alberts, Hanamirian and Holubar declined to comment for this article, referring the The Daily Princetonian to a press release issued Thursday afternoon.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

Alberts is also a columnist for the ‘Prince.’

Class Day will take place on June 3 after the conclusion of Reunions and one day before Commencement. Last year, comedian Steve Carell addressed the Class of 2012, and Brooke Shields ’87 spoke in 2011.