Senior Class Marshals Lincoln Mayer (left) and Alexandra Linden (right) lead the 2004 Commencement procession. Behind them are senior Ifeoma Anunkor and Class Speaker Matthew Murumba. |
Seven receive honorary degrees
The college awarded honorary degrees to the following seven individuals during
the annual Commencement exercises on May 23.
Rafael Campo ’87 has combined a career as a physician
with a second career as a poet. Practicing general internal medicine with Health
Care Associates at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, he also is
an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, where he has developed
a curriculum in medicine and literature. In addition, he has been active in gay and lesbian health issues and HIV and
AIDS prevention. Campo is the author of four books of poetry and the autobiographical
Poetry of Healing: A Doctor’s Education in Empathy, Identity and Desire. Doctor of Literature.
Albert O. Hirschman has been an iconoclastic path breaker on the subject of
economic development, and is well-known
for his willingness to step outside his discipline. His original concepts, including
that of “exit, voice and loyalty,” and “backward and forward
linkages,” have changed the landscape of the social sciences. During his
long and varied career, he worked
as a Federal Reserve Board economist;
a Colombian economic adviser; and as a professor at Yale, Columbia, Harvard and
the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he became emeritus in 1985.
Doctor of Humane Letters.
Donald McMillan Routh ’58 has been a national leader
in defining and promoting need-based financial aid in American colleges and universities.
Dean of financial aid at Amherst from 1964 to 1981, then dean of financial aid
at Yale, Routh chaired the College Scholarship Service Council and the Policy
Committee of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, where he sparked national
discussion of
financial aid issues while improving student access to higher education. Doctor
of Humane Letters.
Kate Seelye ’84 is one of the nation’s most recognized voices on
Arab and
Middle Eastern affairs. A National Public Radio reporter who previously worked
for influential news organizations including the Los Angeles Times and the NewsHour
with Jim Lehrer, she currently has a Fulbright grant to support work on a documentary
about U.S.-Arab relations. Doctor of Humane Letters.
Theda Skocpol is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary thinker, recognized since
the beginning of her career as a major figure in the fields of historical sociology
and comparative politics. At Harvard, she serves both as the Victor S. Thomas
Professor of Government and Sociology and as director of the Center for American
Political Studies, and she has been president of both the American Political
Science
Association and the Social Science History Association. Her first book, States
and
Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis
of France, Russia and China, changed the way revolutions are studied, and her
groundbreaking Protecting Soldiers and Mothers recast the history of American
social provision. Doctor of Laws.
Robert Trivers is a professor of anthropology and biological sciences at Rutgers
University and adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of Medicine
and Dentistry of New Jersey. A leader in the fields of sociobiology and evolutionary
psychology, Trivers has described his own interests as encompassing social evolution,
natural selection and social theory, and the evolution of “selfish” genetic
elements. A revolutionary thinker, he is the author of
a number of books—including, perhaps most importantly, Social Evolution—as
well as a series of papers that over the past 30 years have helped redefine the
fields of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. Doctor of Science.
Jeffrey Charles Wright ’87 is an award-winning stage, film and television
actor. He began acting late—during his senior year at Amherst—and
a few years later
received a Tony Award for his performance in Angels in America, then earned an
Obie and a second Tony nomination for Topdog/Underdog. On screen, he played the
title role in Basquiat, and also starred in Shaft and Ride with the Devil. Last
year he earned a Golden Globe for his performance in HBO’s acclaimed adaptation
of Angels in America. Doctor of Humane Letters.
For full citations, go to www.amherst.edu/commencement/2004/honorands/
Next: Prof. Ray A. Moore retires >>
Photo: Frank Ward
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