Each year, Lawrence awards between two and five honorary doctorate degrees at Commencement. Former recipients include N. Scott Momaday, Norman Dello Joio, Maya Angelou, and Bishop Kallistos Ware. On Sunday, June 13, when the Class of 2004 graduates, four notable individuals will join their prestigious ranks.Honorary doctorate recipients arrive at Lawrence University on Saturday evening, June 12, and participate in the commencement ceremony at 10:30 a.m. on June 13. Each degree recipient is also asked to speak for five minutes or less at the commencement ceremony after receiving the degree. Recipients this year will be John Carroll, Samantha Power, Jonathan Fanton, and Stanley Fish. The offices of each recipient confirmed their attendance at the Commencement ceremonies this June.
John Carroll, editor of the Los Angeles Times, enjoys a rich family tradition at Lawrence. “I’m looking forward to it because I’ve heard so much about Lawrence over the years, all very favorable.” Carroll’s sister, Margaret Carroll, Class of ’61, recently moved to Appleton and is very devoted to Lawrence. Carroll’s great-grandmother, Minnie Birge Sawyer, was valedictorian at Lawrence in 1878. “I’ve admired Lawrence from afar for a long time, and I’ve appreciated what it’s done for my family, and now I get the opportunity to see it first-hand,” remarked Carroll.
As editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times, Carroll enjoyed enormous success this year. The LA Times received five Pulitzer Prizes this year, in Breaking News Reporting, National Reporting, Criticism, Editorial Writing, and Feature Photography.
Samantha Power will also be receiving an honorary degree. Power is a lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Power’s most recent book, “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.
Originally from Ireland, Power moved to the United States at age nine and is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. Power is currently at work on a book on the causes and consequences of historical amnesia in American foreign policy.
Jonathan Fanton, president of the MacArthur Foundation, is another recipient of an honorary degree. The MacArthur Foundation, one of the nation’s ten largest private philanthropic foundations, celebrated is 25th anniversary in December of 2003.
Stanley Fish is the fourth and final individual receiving an honorary degree this year. Fish is currently the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He is also a professor of English and criminal justice at UIC. Fish has also served as a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, and Duke University, where he was also the head of the English department.