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News from PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Office of Communications
Stanhope Hall
Princeton, New Jersey 08544-5264
Telephone 609-258-3601; Fax 609-258-1301
For immediate release: June 4, 2002
Contact: Marilyn Marks, (609) 258-3601 or mailto:mmarks@princeton.edu
Princeton awards eight honorary degrees
Recipients honored for contributions to science,
education, arts, humanities
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Eight distinguished individuals whose
accomplishments span the worlds of science, education, and
the arts and humanities received honorary doctorates today
at Princeton University's 255th Commencement.
Princeton President Shirley M. Tilghman awarded degrees
to scientist and physician Anthony S. Fauci, acclaimed
minister James A. Forbes Jr., radio host Terry Gross,
professor and historian Bernard Lewis, Oxford University
Vice-Chancellor Colin Lucas, playwright and director Emily
Mann, baseball legend Cal Ripken Jr. and actress and
television host Oprah Winfrey.
Honorary degree recipients are elected by Princeton's
Board of Trustees. A trustee committee solicits nominations
from the entire University community.
Following is information on the degree recipients, along
with the official citations (in italics):
Anthony S. Fauci, Doctor of Science
Since 1984, Anthony Fauci has served as
director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases of the National Institutes of Health, an
organization he joined in 1968. A number of his scientific
observations form the basis for current understanding of the
regulation of the human immune system, and he is widely
recognized for delineating the precise mechanisms through
which immunosupressive agents modulate the human immune
response. He has received international recognition for his
contributions to the understanding of how the AIDS virus
destroys the body's defenses, and he has been instrumental
in developing strategies for the therapy and immune
reconstitution of patients with this disease as well as for
a vaccine to prevent HIV infection. Fauci has taken the lead
in convincing lawmakers to recognize the seriousness of the
disease and to commit resources to its prevention and cure.
In the anthrax threat that emerged in the fall of 2001, he
led efforts to provide fact-based, clear and prompt
communication to the public.
College of the Holy Cross (A.B., 1962);
Cornell University (M.D., 1966)
His achievements as a research scientist
have given us new tools with which to understand the human
immune system and the scourges that attack it. As a public
servant he has championed the importance of research into
the HIV virus and behavioral strategies to prevent
infection. With intelligence and clarity he helped the
nation understand the medical implications of the anthrax
outbreak, reminding us that while there is no vaccination
against the threat of terrorism, the timely dissemination of
thoughtful and accurate information is a powerful
antidote.
James A. Forbes, Jr., Doctor of Divinity
In 1989, the Reverend Dr. James Forbes
Jr. was installed as the fifth senior minister of The
Riverside Church in New York City, becoming the first
African-American to lead the largest multicultural
congregation in the nation. An ordained minister in the
American Baptist Churches and the Original United Holy
Church of America, Forbes has won recognition as one of the
most effective and powerful preachers in the
English-speaking world. He was a member of the faculty of
the Union Theological Seminary from 1976 to 1989 and has
taught at Auburn Theological Seminary, the Harvard Divinity
School and Yale University. Forbes has served as co-chair of
A Partnership of Faith, an interfaith organization of clergy
from New York's Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim
communities, and is a consultant to the Congress of National
Black Churches.
Howard University (B.S., 1957); Union
Theological Seminary (M.Div., 1962); Colgate-Rochester
Divinity School (D. Min., 1975)
Uniting in his sermons head with heart,
experiential concreteness with theoretical perspective, he
has enriched the tradition of African-American and American
religious oratory and earned widespread acclaim as a
"preacher's preacher." Through seminary teaching he has
nurtured generations of ministerial students by inspiring
them to careers of spirit-filled preaching and
transformative social action. From the pulpit of one of the
nation's great churches, he reaches out across
denominational, racial and international boundaries,
revitalizing the church and renewing the spirit of the
nation.
Terry Gross, Doctor of Humanities
Since 1975, Terry Gross has produced and
hosted the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air." The
daily hour-long program includes largely uncut interviews
with those who create culture, complemented by opinions from
well-known critics and commentators. Winner of
broadcasting's prestigious Peabody Award in 1994 for
"probing questions, revelatory interviews and unusual
insights," the program, which originates at WHYY-FM in
Philadelphia, reaches about 300 stations and about 3 million
listeners in the United States and in Western
Europe.
State University of New York at Buffalo
(1972, B.A.; 1975 M.Ed.)
Her voice is her presence. Her radio
interviews not only reveal the connections between a guest's
work and the life that led to that work, they also speak
volumes about her: her intelligence, her incisiveness, her
wit, her aplomb, even her courage. Offering us a cultural
background that can inform our judgment and help us make
sense of our world, she has become herself a cultural force.
At a time when news is processed and pressed into sound
bites, she satisfies our hunger for the whole story with a
feast of facts and whets our appetites for new, even
challenging perspectives with a breath of fresh
airwave.
Bernard Lewis, Doctor of Humane Letters
Bernard Lewis is Cleveland Dodge
Professor of Near Eastern Studies, emeritus, at Princeton.
He taught at the University of London from 1949 until 1974,
when he was appointed to the Princeton faculty. He retired
in 1986. Lewis has been called the most eminent living
historian of the Middle East and is considered one of the
few scholars whose range of knowledge, research and insight
has encompassed the entire Islamic world. His monographs,
which include "The Political Language of Islam," "Islam and
the West" and "Cultures in Conflict," span the medieval to
the modern periods and encompass multiple aspects of the
Islamic world, from its interactions with the West to
understanding of its modern dilemmas. In 1990, he was named
the Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities by the National
Endowment for the Humanities. He remains a prolific scholar
and an active participant in the intellectual life of his
Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton.
University of London (B.A., 1936; Ph.D.,
1939)
For more than a half-century the
undisputed leader of Near Eastern studies worldwide, he has
illuminated our understanding of the entire Islamic world
from the borders of India, through Iran, Turkey and the Arab
world, to the ocean boundaries of Morocco. It is not the
clash of civilizations that has fascinated him, but rather
their interactions and mutual dependencies over two
millennia. With the seasoned experience of an historian, his
penetrating insights, delivered with exceptional wit and
elegance, have helped ordinary citizens as well as powerful
heads of state understand and address the complexities and
perplexities of our times.
Colin Lucas, Doctor of Laws
In his role as vice-chancellor of the
University of Oxford, Colin Lucas leads one of the world's
foremost institutions of higher education. His term as
vice-chancellor, begun in 1997, recently was extended to
2004, in part to allow him to oversee a major reorganization
of the university's governance structure which he recently
introduced. A renowned historian of democratic politics and
of the French revolution, his numerous scholarly works
include "Beyond the Terror," "The Political Culture of the
French Revolution" (editor) and "The New Penguin History of
Modern France" (editor). He was professor and chair of the
Department of History at the University of Chicago and the
master of Balliol College, Oxford, before his appointment as
vice-chancellor. His leadership has been essential in
forging closer collaborative relationships between Oxford
and Princeton universities.
University of Oxford (B.A., 1962;
D.Phil., 1969; M.A., 1973)
A preeminent historian, whose specialty
is France in the 18th century, he has uncovered the seeds of
democracy in the chaos of the French revolution. A
preeminent statesman in the world of higher learning, he
leads Oxford University's evolution into the 21st century.
As Oxford's vice-chancellor and a champion of its
partnership with Princeton, he has expanded the boundaries
of academic life and revived the international Republic of
Letters. The same qualities shine through all his
activities: intelligence and tolerance, selflessness and
fortitude, grit and wit.
Emily Mann, Doctor of Fine Arts
Emily Mann is an award-winning playwright
and director. She has described her plays as "theater of
testimony," where real-life characters act as witnesses to
dramatic events in their own lives. Her play "Still Life"
(1982) was the recipient of six Obie Awards; "Having Our
Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years" (1994) was
nominated for Tony, Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk
awards for best play and best director of a play, and went
on to Broadway. Since 1990 she has been artistic director of
McCarter Theatre in Princeton, and her efforts to build a
"theater community" were recognized by McCarter's winning
the 1994 Tony for best regional theater. In her capacity as
artistic director, she has produced and directed new works
and re-interpreted the classics. In addition to writing
plays, screenplays, translations and adaptations and
directing, she has taught in Princeton University's Program
in Theater and Dance.
Harvard University (B.A., 1974);
University of Minnesota (M.F.A., 1976)
As a playwright, she has borne witness to the centrality
of stories sometimes thought marginal, providing us with
unsettling yet eloquent documentaries of the way we live
now. As a director, she has allowed us to hear the full
range of comic and tragic voices in the works of Shakespeare
and Ibsen, Chekhov and Williams. As the artistic director of
Princeton's McCarter Theatre and a teacher in the
university's Program in Theater and Dance, she has graced
the stages and classrooms of our lives with her forceful
testimonies to a theater that is both aesthetically pleasing
and politically engaged, both beautiful and useful.
Cal Ripken, Jr., Doctor of Humanities
Cal Ripken began his career in baseball
with the Baltimore Orioles in 1978, moving from the minors
to the major league team in 1981. Early in his career he
played shortstop, and as a rookie player he was entrusted by
the Orioles with this most demanding of defensive positions.
In 1983, the Orioles won the World Series and Ripken won the
American League's Most Valuable Player award, becoming the
first player to win back-to-back rookie-of-the-year and MVP
honors. He also won the MVP award in 1991. Until his
retirement in 2001 he sustained his reputation as one of the
most remarkable athletes of his generation. In 1995 he
surpassed the record set by Lou Gehrig for the number of
games played in succession. Ripken's involvement in his
hometown includes his founding of the Kelly and Cal Ripken,
Jr. Foundation, which supports adult and family literacy,
youth recreation, the arts and health-related programs in
the Baltimore area; and participation in adult literacy
programs through the Baltimore Reads Ripken Learning Center.
He is the author of "Ripken: Cal on Cal" (1995) and
co-author of "The Only Way I Know" (1997).
We honor him for his legendary perfect
attendance record: 2,632 straight games, eclipsing Lou
Gehrig's record by more than 500, and for the excellence of
his play: 19 times an all-star, twice his league's most
valuable player. But more than that we honor the qualities
that he epitomizes - dependability, perseverance, stamina,
devotion to duty -- and his service to his community through
programs dedicated to literacy, health, athletics and the
arts. In his work with young people, on and off the diamond,
he seeks to help them do what he has always done: apply as
fully as possible the talents they were given.
Oprah Gail Winfrey, Doctor of Fine Arts
Oprah Winfrey, whose television broadcasting career began
when she was still in high school, produces and hosts the
"Oprah Winfrey Show." Nationally syndicated since 1986 and
now reaching audiences in 112 countries, the program has won
more than 30 Emmy awards, as well as the 1999 National Book
Foundation's 50th Anniversary Gold Medal for contributions
to reading and books. This award reflects her efforts
through Oprah's Book Club, an on-air reading club, to
promote enthusiasm for reading. Winfrey made her acting
debut in director Steven Spielberg's film "The Color Purple"
and starred in the critically acclaimed film "Beloved" and
in numerous made-for-television movies. As chairman of
Harpo, Inc. and Harpo Films, Inc. as well as other
production companies, Winfrey has produced a number of
award-winning films. She has taught at Northwestern
University's business school. Her support of higher
education includes Oprah's Angel Network, which raises
college scholarship funds for disadvantaged youngsters.
Tennessee State University (B.S., 1987)
Film producer, actress, publisher,
television icon, philanthropist, her roles have a
seamlessness beyond their effervescent success. Each one
reflects her insatiable curiosity, commitment to universal
literacy and the rewards of knowledge, and her insistence on
the boundless amelioration of the human spirit. The theme of
her life and work represents the University's highest
aspirations of education, opportunity and
service.
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