June 22, 2006

Seven receive honorary degrees

Elijah Anderson
Doctor of Science
An expert on the sociology of black America, Elijah Anderson is the Charles and William L. Day Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. His many influential writings include the books A Place on the Corner: A Study of Black Street Corner Men; The Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City; and Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community, winner of the American Sociological Association’s Robert E. Park Award. A past vice president of the American Sociological Association, he is director of the Philadelphia Ethnography Project, a board member of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and associate editor of Qualitative Sociology and the American Sociological Review. Anderson earned his PhD at Northwestern as a Ford Foundation fellow.

James Fallows
Doctor of Humane Letters
National correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly and author of seven books, James Fallows is one of the finest journalists of his generation. After graduating from Harvard University, where he was editor of the daily Crimson, and studying at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, Fallows began his career with Washington Monthly and Texas Monthly magazines. He then served as President Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter (1977–79), Washington editor for the Atlantic Monthly (1979–96), and the editor of U.S. News & World Report (1996–98). Winner of the American Book Award for his National Defense (1981), he was also heard frequently through the 1980s and 1990s as a commentator on NPR’s Morning Edition. Fallows is the chair of the board for the Washington-based nonprofit New America Foundation and the executive producer of Agenda, an annual conference for technology industry leaders.

Lynn Hunt
Doctor of Humane Letters
One of America’s most respected historians, Lynn Hunt is the Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History at the University of California, Los Angeles. After earning a BA from Carlton College and an MA and PhD from Stanford University, she taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Pennsylvania before joining the UCLA faculty in 1999. Author, coauthor, or editor of 15 books, she is especially known for her writings on the French Revolution — including Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (1984) and The Family Romance of the French Revolution (1992). Hunt has also written extensively on historical theory and methodology, cultural history, and the histories of gender, sexuality, and human rights. A past president of the American Historical Association, she was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991.

Robert S. Langer
Doctor of Science
Exploring the intersection of engineering, biology, and medicine, Robert S. Langer has made discoveries in drug delivery and tissue engineering that have had profound effects on human health. After earning a doctorate in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he joined its faculty in 1978 and today is one of 14 Institute Professors (MIT’s highest faculty rank). Langer holds more than 500 patents, and his research has led to such widely used medical and health-care products as the nicotine patch. Named one of the top individuals in his field by Forbes, Discover, and Time magazines, he has received more than 130 honors, including election to the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Science, and the National Academy of Engineering, which in 2002 awarded him the Charles Stark Draper Prize, the world’s most prestigious engineering honor.

Barack Obama
Doctor of Laws
After winning more than half the vote in Illinois’s seven-candidate 2004 Democratic senatorial primary, Barack Obama attracted nationwide accolades for his Democratic National Convention keynote speech and won his Senate race with 70 percent of the vote. Born to a Kenyan father and Kansan mother, Obama graduated from Columbia University and earned his law degree from Harvard University, where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. He then served as a community organizer and civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught law at the University of Chicago before winning election in 1996 to the Illinois Senate, where he worked to reform the state’s criminal justice system, expand early childhood education, and provide tax relief for working families. Within months of his accession to the U.S. Senate in 2005, Time magazine named Obama one of the world’s 100 most influential people, and the British journal New Statesman listed him as one of 10 people who will change the world.

Nathan Rosenberg
Doctor of Sciences
Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at Stanford University, Nathan Rosenberg has shaped both academic theory and public policy through his research on the economics of technological change. After earning his PhD from the University of Wisconsin– Madison, Rosenberg taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Purdue University, and Wisconsin before joining the Stanford faculty in 1974. His widely influential books include The American System of Manufactures, Technology and American Economic Growth, Perspectives on Technology, Inside the Black Box, Exploring the Black Box, and The Emergence of Economic Ideas. Winner of the 1996 Leonardo da Vinci Medal of the Society for the History of Technolo-gy, Rosenberg is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, chair of the United Nations Institute for New Technolo-gy advisory board, and a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research board of directors.

Susan Solomon
Doctor of Science
A senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Chemical Sciences Division since earning her PhD in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, Susan Solomon is widely recognized as a leader in the field of atmospheric chemistry. Her research has provided key insights into the mechanism of ozone depletion over Antarctica, where her work as head project scientist for the National Ozone Expedition at McMurdo Station in 1986 and 1987 corroborated the role of chlorofluorocarbons in ozone destruction. In 1994 Antarctica’s Solomon Glacier and Solomon Saddle were named in her honor. Author or coauthor of more than 150 scientific papers as well as two books, she is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the recipient of numerous national and international honors — including the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest scientific honor.