Comment on this article
Recipients
of Honorary Degrees
July/August 2010
Robert
Alter, a scholar of
comparative literature, whose “unparalleled translation and …
interpretations of the Hebrew Bible” have “illuminated the meaning of these ancient
sacred texts in a fresh voice that is faithful to their origins”: Doctor of
Humanities.
Steven
Chu, U.S. secretary
of energy and Nobel laureate in physics who has “accomplished the seemingly
impossible by trapping and cooling atoms with beams of light,” and now promotes
policies aimed at “transforming national energy policy”: Doctor of Science.
David
Levin ’92 and Michael
Feinberg, educators
and founders of the Knowledge is Power Program, which runs charter schools, for
helping “poor children achieve impressive levels of academic success” and
“showing how classrooms can be transformed, and the promise of public education
fulfilled for our country”: Doctors of Humane Letters.
Aretha
Franklin, the
recording artist and “Queen of Soul,” for her “signature style that transcends
any one musical genre,” and a voice that “expresses our feelings”: Doctor of
Music.
Orhan
Pamuk, Nobel
laureate in literature, for an approach to the novel that “weaves together past
and present, modernity and history, national and cosmopolitan, secular and religious,”
and tackles “issues and moral questions faced by thoughtful people in Turkey
and around the globe”: Doctor of Letters.
Michael
Rutter, a
psychiatrist known as the “father of child psychiatry” for “pioneering work” that
has “powerfully advanced our understanding of the mental health, social development,
and resilience of children and adolescents,” and whose studies of the effects
of maternal deprivation and stress have “transformed the way we view child
development”: Doctor of Medical Sciences.
Ellen
Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia and the first woman elected as a head of state in Africa,
who has “promoted economic development, improved health, restored civility, and
kept peace” through able leadership, anticorruption measures, and her
“sacrifice, dedication, determination, and wisdom”: Doctor of Laws.
Marilyn
Strathern, a social
anthropologist and the head of Girton College at Cambridge University, who has
had a “seminal influence” in her field and made “contributions to our understanding
of the human family”: Doctor of Social Science.
Zhang
Yimou, the Chinese
filmmaker and choreographer of the Beijing Olympics’ opening ceremonies, whose
work has “portrayed China in all its glory, complexity, contradiction, and
charm” and “captured the struggles of the human spirit”: Doctor of Fine Arts.  |
