Inga Saffron, the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic at The Philadelphia Inquirer, will deliver the keynote address at the Weitzman Graduation Ceremony on Saturday, May 16, 2026.
“As we gear up to celebrate America’s independence, let’s also celebrate our indispensable independent voices on the built environment,” says Weitzman Dean and Paley Professor Fritz Steiner. “Journalists like Inga Saffron help citizens understand what’s at stake when a new building goes up or a historic building is taken down.”
Saffron is the architecture critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer. For more than 20 years, she has been a forceful advocate for meaningful design, accessible public spaces, affordable housing, historic preservation, and policies that make our cities more livable and climate resilient. Her work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Vincent Scully Prize from the National Building Museum, and a Loeb Fellowship from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. In 2020, Rutgers University Press published a selection of her columns for The Inquirer under the title: Becoming Philadelphia: How an Old American City Made Itself New Again.
Saffron began her career as a municipal reporter, where she learned ins-and-outs of local planning and zoning. She spent the 1990s as a foreign correspondent and covered the collapse of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. In addition to her writing about architecture and urbanism, she is an expert on the cultural history of sturgeon. Her book, Caviar: The Strange History and Uncertain Future of the World’s Most Coveted Delicacy, appeared in 2003 to rave reviews. She is currently working on a history of the American newspaper building, tentatively titled Building News: How American Newspapers Used Architecture to Promote Their Brand, Engage the Public and Sell Papers.
Weitzman’s Class of 2026 is expected to include 319 individuals from 24 countries and 28 states: 138 students in the Department of Architecture, 66 in City & Regional Planning, 49 in Landscape Architecture, 25 in Urban Spatial Analytics, 6 in Fine Arts, 21 in Historic Preservation, and 14 dual-degree students.
Weitzman’s ceremony has long been a showcase for distinguished American designers, policy makers, and writers with a commitment to a more beautiful, equitable, and sustainable built environment. Recent speakers have included architect, attorney, and scholar Sara Bronin; New York-based artist Mary Miss; landscape architect and professor of practice emeritus James Corner, who will receive an honorary Doctor of Arts from Penn at the University's 2026 Commencement Ceremony on May 18; and New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman.
The ceremony is scheduled for Saturday, May 16, 6:00pm EDT. Attendance for the in-person event is limited to ticketed graduates and their guests, but the event will be streamed on YouTube.
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