COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY RECORD May 27, 1994 Vol. 19 No. 30 TEXTS OF CITATIONS FOR HONORARY DEGREE RECIPIENTS Eight persons received honorary degrees and awards at Columbia's commencement exercises on Thurs., May 19. The texts of citations read by President Rupp follow. ELLEN VICTORIA FUTTER, for the University Medal for Excellence Remarkable daughter of Barnard and Columbia, the youngest President ever to lead a major American college, your extraordinary career continues to light up the sky as you assume the presidency of the American Museum of Natural History. Your vigorous leadership extends as well to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where you serve us all as chairman of the board of directors. But Columbia knows you best as the skillful and popular leader of our cherished sister institution, Barnard College, which you have steered confidently into its second century of excellence. As a distinguished graduate of Columbia Law School and successful lawyer, we expected no less of you. Yet even your longtime admirers have been amazed at the scope of your accomplishments as a gifted educator. Few academic leaders can match the devotion you inspire from students and alumnae. Your dedication to women's education as an indispensable, creative force in our society has energized your administration as you moved to triple the College endowment, stabilize the operating budget, and make Barnard a truly residential college. Your vision and pragmatism helped lead to a strengthening of the formal agreement by which Barnard fully shares in the intellectual, social, and athletic life of Columbia, while maintaining its own identity as one of the world's great centers of undergraduate education. Your presidency launched an era of achievement that will make future generations proud. Columbia University takes special pleasure in awarding you the University Medal for Excellence. WM. THEODORE de BARY, for the Degree of Doctor of Letters Son of Columbia, great teacher, prolific author, trailblazing academic leader, for more than half a century, as undergraduate and graduate student, as professor, department chairman, and provost, you have built a career of incomparable attainment and loyal devotion to Columbia. The core values of your Columbia College education became the foundation of your life's work: to make East Asian thought and culture a focus of humanistic research and to move Asian studies into the core of general education. Your inspiration and generosity would later lead to the creation of the Wm. Theodore and Fanny Brett de Bary and Class of 1941 Collegiate Professorship of Asian Humanities. As the leading Western scholar of Confucianism, author of twenty-three books--from your translation of "Five Women Who Loved Love" four decades ago to your latest masterwork, "Waiting for the Dawn"--you have earned justly deserved accolades as writer and teacher, and won wide renown throughout this land and Asia as a pioneer in American higher education. You have been honored as a Great Teacher by those who know that your reverence for learning begins with your respect for them: the students of Columbia College. They have also tendered you an equally coveted prize, the Lionel Trilling Book Award. Today, your University presumes to add to your many honors, in recognition of your landmark contributions to education in the humanities and your extraordinary service to Alma Mater. Columbia University gratefully bestows upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa. BETTY FRIEDAN, for the Degree of Doctor of Letters Woman of courage, author of change, defender of women's rights, your writings have done far more than win celebrity; they have demonstrated profound insight into the structure and values of our society. Taking action on your penetrating analyses, as the major feminist leader of our time, you have been as tireless as you have been effective in articulating women's hopes and furthering women's opportunities. More than three decades ago, "The Feminine Mystique" exploded upon the scene, giving impetus and expression to the emerging women's movement, changing forever the social history of America. As founder of NOW and organizer of the National Women's Political Caucus, you began to provide legal and political support to several generations of women in the struggle for equality. As author, editor and professor, you helped women and men understand oppression and determine to press for change. Through all of these worthy careers, you have truly made a difference in the course of events in our century. In recognition of your pivotal role in history, your forceful and creative leadership, and the power of your example, Columbia University is very pleased to bestow upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa. JAMES P. COMER, for the Degree of Doctor of Laws Psychiatrist, educator, visionary activist, builder of the spirit, you have taught America to heed its own history of affirmation and hope by recognizing in our own time that hard-pressed schools in the most despairing ghettos can help students realize their potential for self-fulfillment. In your inspiring book, "Maggie's Dream," you described the path of courage and persistence for which your parents, Maggie and Hugh, prepared you in the East Chicago of your youth, later the community of your medical internship. You have followed that path fearlessly past every obstacle of prejudice and discrimination. With little early support for your work from the great institutions of our society, you began in strife-torn New Haven, with patience and rationality, to change the educational environment for children. Following developmental principles, you brought about a transformation of attitudes that helped parents and children understand that schools could belong to them. The positive impact of programs you pioneered have been confirmed in recent studies funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Your writing, and your work for the Yale Child Study Center, the Baldwin-King School Project, the National Commission on Causes and Prevention of Violence, and many other groups that have felt the force of your humane leadership, have affirmed the counsel of your parents to seize opportunity with wisdom and determination. Columbia University, too, takes deep pride in your gifts as we confer upon you today the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. JOHAN JORGEN HOLST (1937-1994), for the Degree of Doctor of Laws With gratitude and with sorrow, Columbia University honors Johan Jorgen Holst for his immortal attainments in bringing reason and sanity to the most volatile issues of peace in the world. Dr. Holst was a gracious and modest man, an intellectual and an influential public leader, internationally renowned as analyst of foreign and defense policy, a brilliant practitioner of both. He was graduated from Columbia College in 1960 and later became director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. Twice he served as Norway's Minister of Defense and then, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, he made history. Our hearts swelled with pride when this devoted son of Columbia brought hope to the Middle East. With courage and creativity, honesty and humility, dedication and determination, Johan Jorgen Holst gave himself to the cause of peace, working tirelessly to bring about negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians and establish an accord for mutual security. Through his mediation efforts, during months of secret talks between longtime enemies at his home in Norway, the peace process, despite seemingly insuperable obstacles, moved relentlessly forward. Dr. Holst's wife and colleague, Marianne Heiberg, also played a key role in these historic deliberations. Their son, Johan Jorgen Holst, Jr., does us honor today by accepting from Columbia University our tribute to a great and good man, the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. RUTH BADER GINSBURG, for the Degree of Doctor of Laws Columbia University today declares its pride in Ruth Bader Ginsburg, our graduate, our professor, and our Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Thirty-six years ago, it was our good fortune that you traveled here from Cambridge to become an extraordinary student at our Law School. In 1972 you joined our faculty, where your husband and ultimately your daughter would also serve, but you were the pioneer: the first woman to be a tenured law professor at Columbia. You taught one of the nation's first courses in the law of sex discrimination, co-wrote a landmark casebook on the subject, co-founded and directed the Women's Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, and, with the help of your students and faculty colleagues, you won major victories before the Supreme Court. When President Carter appointed you to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, America gained a judge who combined a passion for equal justice under the law with a sense of the appropriate bounds of judicial decision. Your thirteen years of distinguished service have now been fully recognized by President Clinton, the United States Senate, and the nation. Columbia honors its own best traditions by lauding your work as a great teacher, a scholar of the highest order, and a jurist who has been ranked among the few who have truly altered the course of America. For the enduring magnitude of your contributions to education in the law and to the history of our democracy, Columbia deems it a high privilege to confer upon you the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. DOROTHY DeLAY, for the Degree of Doctor of Music In the whole history of music, you stand alone: the first American and the first woman to become a powerfully influential teacher of the violin. From Itzhak Perlman to Columbia's Gil Shaham, from Midori to Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and scores of renowned virtuosos, almost without exception the leading members of a generation of violinists on the world's concert platforms have been nurtured by a teaching style uniquely your own, modest, soft- spoken, open-minded, encouraging, exciting, helping students to discover themselves. Your phenomenal success at teaching flows from a thorough understanding of learning; you practice the literal meaning of "education": to lead out rather than to impose upon. Your grateful and abidingly loyal alumni have thus found their own distinct voices. Perhaps your greatest achievement is that your students share not a particular technique or tone, but great joy in their work. That is your gift to us as well. We rejoice that you are one Dorothy from Kansas who chose to stay here with us in the Emerald City. While we also hail the wonders you have wrought at Aspen and Cincinnati, we salute you today above all for your extraordinary work at Juilliard; you began when the School was our neighbor on Morningside Heights and you have continued strongly into the era of our joint degree program. Through the music of those whom you have guided and freed, you have brought beauty and inspiration to the world. Columbia University is delighted to award you the degree of Doctor of Music, honoris causa. HARRY BARKUS GRAY, for the Degree of Doctor of Science Genius of the classroom and of the laboratory, builder of bridges between sciences, mentor to grateful generations of students, chemist extraordinaire, you exemplify the teacher-scholar for whom great research inspires great teaching. You have achieved excellence in all aspects of your professorial career. You were a founder of the modern school of inorganic chemistry and a leader in linking that field with biochemistry. Your many hundreds of research papers recount elegant experiments and pioneering discoveries, including your seminal work on electron transfer reactions in proteins. As a teacher, you have reached beyond those lucky enough to attend your brilliant lectures into a wider, equally appreciative audience, the readers of your more than a dozen books. As academic leader you have built a chemistry department of high distinction at the California Institute of Technology. As a spokesman for science in America, you have played a powerfully influential role. Your gifts and attainments have been recognized from Europe to Israel to Australia and beyond. Columbia University, on whose faculty you so ably served early in your career, is happy and proud to join in this justly deserved acclaim by awarding you the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa.