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Hamilton College has announced the names of five people who will receive honorary degrees at the College's 190th commencement on Sunday, May 26.

The recipients are Stephen Carter, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale Law School; jazz pianist Dick Hyman; Paul Kellogg, general and artistic director of the New York City Opera; Broadway's The Producers librettist Thomas Meehan, a 1951 graduate of Hamilton; and Christie Whitman, Environmental Protection Agency administrator under President George W. Bush.

The honorary degrees will be presented during Hamilton's commencement exercises on Sunday, May 26, beginning at 10:30 a.m. on the Main Quadrangle. Whitman will deliver the commencement address.

Stephen L. Carter
Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He teaches constitutional law; contracts; intellectual property; law, secrets and lying; and law and religion. He holds a bachelor's degree from Stanford and a law degree from Yale.

Carter served as law clerk to Judge Spottswood W. Robinson III, U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, from 1979-80, and as clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, from 1980-81. Carter was an associate with Shea & Gardner in Washington, D.C., from 1981-82.  He joined the Yale faculty as assistant professor in 1982, was promoted to associate professor in 1984, served as professor from 1986-91, and has been Cromwell Professor since 1991. 

Carter is the author of Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby (1991), The Culture of Disbelief (1993), The Confirmation Mess (1994), Integrity (1996), Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy (1998), and The Dissent of the Governed: A Meditation on Law, Religion and Loyalty (1998).

Dick Hyman
Since his musical career began in the 1950s, Hyman has worked as pianist, organist, arranger, conductor and composer. His versatility has resulted in more than 100 albums recorded under his own name and many more in support of other artists. Hyman's concert compositions for orchestra include his Piano Concerto, Ragtime Fantasy, The Longest Blues in the World, and From Chama to Cumbres by Steam, a work for orchestra, jazz combo and prerecorded railroad sounds. Since 1985, he has acted as artistic director of the acclaimed Jazz in July series of concerts at New York's 92nd Street Y and is jazz advisor to the Oregon Festival of American Music. In 1995 he was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies and the New Jersey Jazz Society.

Hyman has also had a prolific career in New York as a studio musician and won seven Most Valuable Player awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He received an Emmy for his original score for "Sunshine's on the Way," a daytime drama, and another for musical direction of a PBS special on Eubie Blake. He continues to be a frequent guest performer with Jim Cullum's Jazz Band on Live From Riverwalk.

Hyman has served as composer, arranger and pianist for several Woody Allen films, including Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days and Broadway Danny Rose.  An encyclopedic CD-ROM, Dick Hyman's 100 Years of Jazz Piano is based on his frequent recital-lecture. New recordings include Berlin Lieder, with Marilyn Horne and Robert White, a second duo-piano performance with Ralph Sutton titled Just You, Just Me, and Forgotten Dream (Archives of Novelty Piano) with John Sheridan.

Paul Kellogg
As general and artistic director of the 2,700 seat New York City Opera, Kellogg is credited with distinguishing the company from the Metropolitan Opera Company. He grew up in Hollywood, surrounded by singers, then studied comparative literature at the University of Texas, before spending several years at the Sorbonne in Paris. After teaching French for a time, he moved to Cooperstown, N.Y., and became a founding director of the Glimmerglass Opera.

Kellogg has already earned a place in the annals of American opera for his stewardship of the 27 year-old Glimmerglass Opera, which presents summer seasons in the 900-seat Busch Opera Theater, a superb facility built in 1987, tucked between hills in a predominantly rural setting. The most impressive aspect of Kellogg's tenure at Glimmerglass has been his success in attracting audiences for new or little-known works and for more familiar works in freshly reconsidered productions. During his 23 years at Glimmerglass the company has grown from a fledgling local opera to one of the world's most renowned summer opera festivals and an important source of some of America's most innovative work.

Based on the success of Glimmerglass, Kellogg was chosen as general and artistic director of the New York City Opera in 1996. Furthering New York City Opera's commitment to promoting contemporary and American opera, Kellogg has created a reputation as a stalwart supporter of new and unfamiliar operatic works and of young artists. He serves on the board of Opera America, the New York State Historical Association, the Shoshana Foundation, the Center for Contemporary Opera and Shen Wei Dancearts.

Thomas Meehan
A 1951 Hamilton graduate, Meehan's career has spanned more than 40 years and has included work as journalist, fiction writer, writer of television comedy, screenwriter, and a successful librettist of some very successful Broadway musicals, including Annie and the hugely popular The Producers.  Following graduation from Hamilton, he became a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, in which he published dozens of short stories, parodies and comic sketches. After several of his pieces from The New Yorker had been adapted by others for television, he began writing humor for TV and was a nominee for and winner of four Emmy awards.

In the 1970s, Meehan joined, lyricist and Broadway director Martin Charnin, and Broadway composer Charles Strouse in creating Annie, one of the most honored musicals in the history of the American theater and an international hit that has been staged over the last 25 years in virtually every country in the world. For his libretto of Annie, which opened in 1977, Meehan won both the Drama Desk and Tony awards.

Following Annie he wrote an updated libretto for a revival of the Gershwins' Oh Kay!, and the libretto of Richard Rodgers' final Broadway musical, I Remember Mama.  Other librettos include Ain't Broadway Grand, Annie 2 and Annie Warbucks.

In the 1980s, Meehan spent several years writing film scripts in Los Angeles, and his movie credits include Disney's One Magic Christmas, To Be or Not To Be, and Spaceballs, two pictures he wrote with his old friend, Mel Brooks. In 1998 Brooks asked Meehan to co-write the libretto of a Broadway musical adaptation of Brooks' classic 1968 comic film The Producers. This collaboration earned Meehan his second Drama Desk and Tony awards. Meanwhile, The Producers won 12 Tony awards and has been hailed as the biggest hit in the history of Broadway.

Meehan is currently working on several projects, including co-writing the libretto of an opera based on George Orwell's 1984. In addition in collaboration with Mark O'Donnell, he recently completed the book of a Broadway musical version of John Waters' 1989 film Hairspray, a show that will open on Broadway in August. Meehan has also written the book of a musical version of Robin Hood that will have its first try-out production in Philadelphia next year.

Christie Whitman
Whitman was sworn in as President George Bush's EPA administrator in January 2001. She served previously as the 50th governor of New Jersey.

As EPA administrator Whitman says her focus is on cleaning up brownfields, old urban industrial sites, and on clean air. She recently sided with environmental groups against General Electric, ordering the company to pay $480 million to clean up toxic wastes it had dumped in the Hudson River. Whitman also has taken a stand in demanding that the administration issue a policy, called Clear Skies, on new guidelines for clean air before it issued new rules for pollution controls on power plants.

While governor of New Jersey, Whitman developed a strong environmental record, that led to cleaner air, water and land than when she was first elected in November 1993.  Beach closings reached a record low and the state earned recognition by the Natural Resources Defense Council for instituting the most comprehensive beach monitoring system in the nation.
As a preservationist, Whitman won voter approval for the state's first stable funding source to preserve one million more acres of open space and farmland within 10 years. By 2010, New Jersey will have permanently preserved 40 percent of its total landmass, with more than half preserved during her tenure. Whitman is an advocate for "smart growth," and in New Jersey she encouraged new growth in cities and other areas where roads, sewers and schools are already in place.

Whitman was New Jersey's first female governor. She appointed New Jersey's first African-American State Supreme Court Justice, its first female State Supreme Court Chief Justice, and its first female attorney general.

Prior to becoming governor, Whitman headed the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities and the Somerset County Board of Freeholders. She grew up in Hunterdon County, N.J., and earned a bachelor's degree in government from Wheaton College.

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