U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley to Speak at Rice Commencement

Contact: Michael Cinelli
Phone: (713) 831-4794

U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley to Speak at Rice Commencement

Bill Bradley, the senior U.S. senator from
New Jersey and a major force in national Democratic Party politics,
will deliver the commencement address at Rice University’s eighty-second graduation exercise set for May 13, 1995.

Bradley, 51, is widely recognized as one of the leading
authorities on taxation in America. Before becoming part of the
national political scene in 1978 with his election to the U.S.
Senate, he achieved distinction in academics and athletics.

"We are immensely pleased that Senator Bradley will be the
featured speaker at our commencement ceremonies in May," said Rice
president Malcolm Gillis. "Senator Bradley has been an important
figure in public life for more than two decades and will provide
useful insight to our graduates as a result of his distinguished
career in public service."

Bradley’s selection as the featured commencement speaker
involved a student committee that suggested several possible
speakers last spring. Guided by that committee Gillis approached
Bradley regarding his interest in speaking at Rice’s commencement.

Bradley graduated from Princeton University with honors in 1965.
He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he earned a
graduate degree after studying politics, philosophy and economics.

After returning from Oxford in 1967, Bradley joined the New York
Knicks and played professional basketball for 10 years. In 1970 and
1973, the Knicks won the NBA championship with Bradley as a starting
forward. Bradley’s popular book Life on the Run about his decade
with the Knicks was published in 1976.

Bradley’s second book The Fair Tax was published in 1982 and
helped popularize the ideas that resulted in the Tax Reform Act of
1986.

Bradley is a longtime proponent of higher education and of
worker retraining. In 1991, he devised a new way for families of
college-aged students to pay for higher education that was adopted a
year later as the Self-Reliance Loans program. By allowing students
to use future earnings to pay for college, Bradley’s program ensures
that family income will no longer limit students’ choices.

Self-reliance loans also help adults going back to school and
displaced workers who need additional training to re-enter the job
market.

In 1993, Bradley introduced an eight-point Urban Community-Building Initiative. This initiative is designed to expand
government funding for successful community-based programs and to
test these programs on the national level. In August 1993, Bradley
was successful in securing enactment of six of the eight proposals
contained in his initiative in the Budget Reconciliation Act. He
continues to push for full enactment of his entire plan.

Rice University is an independent, coeducational, nonsectarian
private university dedicated to undergraduate teaching and graduate
studies, research and professional training in selected disciplines.
It has an undergraduate student population of 2,572, a graduate and
professional student population of 1,375 and a full-time faculty of
448.

###