Mayor Ron Dellums has been selected as speaker at the Holy Names University Commencement, HNU President Sister Rosemarie Nassif, SSND, PhD, announced.

The event will be a special one, coming during the university’s 140th anniversary in Oakland. Commencement will begin at 11 am on Saturday, May 10.

Dellums last appeared at HNU in the spring of 2007 when he was one of four mayoral candidates appearing at the Mayoral Forum presented in the Valley Center for the Performing Arts’ Regents Theatre. The forum was co-sponsored by HNU and the League of Women Voters. Dellums was elected mayor later that year.

An Oakland native, Ron Dellums grew up on Wood St in West Oakland, attended Oakland schools and graduated from Oakland Tech, Merritt College (AA), SF State (BA), and UC Berkeley (MSW). Ron served two years active duty in the United States Marine Corps.

Following graduate school, Ron worked as a psychiatric social worker for the California Department of Mental Hygiene. He then directed various programs in Bayview/Hunters Point before becoming Director of the Hunters Point Youth Opportunity Center. Subsequently, he was Director of employment programs for the SF Poverty program and then Senior Consultant on manpower programs for Social Dynamics Inc, a leading Bay Area consulting firm.

In 1967, he was elected to the Berkeley City Council and in 1970 to the US House of Representatives. He represented Oakland, Berkeley, and surrounding areas, in the Congress for 28 years, rising to become Chair of the House DC Committee and then Chair of the House Armed Services Committee.

From his first days in Congress, he authored bills to withhold support from the Apartheid South African regime and it was the Dellums bill that passed the House and made divestment US national policy with Congress over-riding a Reagan presidential veto. This divestment pressure helped the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa to win the release of Nelson Mandela and his election as President of a democratic South Africa.

Ron was a leader on the environment, labor, consumer issues, and civil rights and was continually acknowledged by the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation voters, the AFL-CIO, the National Organization of Women, Public Citizen, among many others, as having a perfect voting record.

In addition to representing his district's views in the Congress, Ron was exceptionally effective in bringing home substantial federal funds for the benefit of Oakland. His achievements included: the dredging of Oakland’s harbors indispensable for maintaining the competitiveness of Oakland as a major port, while restoring wetlands; bringing jobs and anchoring downtown development with the new Federal Building and related development (despite aggressive lobbying to have it located in SF); the creation and development of the Chabot Space and Science Center; as well as monies for BART, AC Transit, health centers, HIV/AIDS programs, senior housing, and for the economic conversion of the Naval Air Station and Oakland Army Base. He is the author of several books, including a recent autobiography Lying Down With the Lions: A Public Life from the Streets of Oakland to the Halls of Power as well as Defense Sense: The Search for a Rational Military Policy.

Since leaving Congress, he has been President of an international management company and a leading spokesman on the tragedy of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa and throughout the world. He was Chair of President Clinton's Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS.

Ron is married to Cynthia Dellums and has 4 children.