This Year’s Commencement speaker

JACK JONES
STAFF WRITER

4/7/2025

Alma College announced the Commencement speaker for the class of 2025 on Wednesday, April 2. This year, Gary Dorrien (‘74) will deliver the keynote speech for the Alma graduating class. Dorrien is a well-known theologian and social ethicist who has had a distinguished career following his graduation from Alma with the highest honor of Summa cum laude.

Dorrien is currently a professor of religion at Columbia University and Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary. He teaches classes on theology, philosophy of religion and social ethics. He was previously a professor at Kalamazoo College, where he taught for 18 years. 

Dorien has written prolifically in his field and is the author of 24 books and over 300 articles. These writings span fields from philosophy and social ethics to religious and intellectual history.

His writing has also been awarded many times, including three Choice awards from the American Library Association and the Prose award from the American Association of Publishers. He also recently received the Gandhi, King, Mandela peace prize for his scholarship, which according to the description “counters and disrupts White racist theology.”

Many of his books also find their origin in his lectures and teachings, such as Imperial Designs which comes from his experience speaking out against the invasion of Iraq, Economic Difference Empire, which focuses on democracy’s connection to economics and The Obama Question, which is derived from his lectures during former President Obama’s first term. 

Some of his most prevalent work is his trilogy, in which he focused on the history of Black gospel and its development, the most recent of which is titled A Darkly Radiant Vision: The Black social gospel in the shadow of MLK.

Praise from peers and critics is everywhere one looks regarding Dorrien, including Robert Neville, a well-known philosopher, who said Dorien “is the most rigorous theological historian of our time.” Michael Eric Dyson, a Social critic, wrote in 2021, “Dorrien is the greatest theological ethicist of the twenty-first century.”

Most recently, Dorrien released a memoir titled “Over from Union Road: My Christian Left Intellectual Life. This book, published by Baylor University, recounts Dorriens’ distinguished life and allows him to put the focus on those who helped him achieve it. In an interview about the memoir with Sojourners, Dorrien said, “This is an I-we-we-I memoir.” He describes the book as focusing on what he learned from those around him.

Dorrien has also had an extensive academic career. After graduating from Alma in 1974, he went to Union Seminary, where he received a Master of Divinity. He followed that with a Master of Arts and Master of Theology from Princeton Theological Seminary before receiving a Ph.D. from Union Graduate School.

Dorrien spent a part of his college career playing baseball as a pitcher before injury sidelined him and he decided to pursue his extensive academic career. 

In addition to the keynote speech at Commencement, Dorrien will also speak at the baccalaureate ceremony on Friday, April 18, which will be livestreamed on the Alma College Chapel YouTube channel. The Commencement ceremony will also be livestreamed the following day on the Alma college YouTube channel. Ultimately, Dorrien will receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters.