The other recipients include jazz drummer and percussionist Robert Rosengarden; Auburn Theological Seminary president and director Barbara G. Wheeler; chairman of the board of Moorco International, Inc. Keith Wellin '50; and author and educator Henry Louis Gates Jr., who will deliver the commencement address. The ceremony will take place at 10:30 a.m. on the Main Quadrangle, or in the event of inclement weather, in the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House. Wheeler will deliver the baccalaureate address on Saturday, May 22, at 3 p.m., also on the Main Quadrangle.
Gates is the W.E.B. DuBois Professor of the Humanities and director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University. He is the author of several notable works of literary criticism, including Figures in Black: Words, Signs and the 'Racial' Self; The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism, which won the 1989 American Book Award; and Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars. He has also authored Colored People: A Memoir, which traces his childhood experiences in a small West Virginia town in the 1950s and 60s; The Future of the Race, co-authored with Cornel West; and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man.
An influential cultural critic, Gates' writings include a 1994 cover story for Time magazine on the new black Renaissance in art, as well as many articles for The New Yorker.
His honors and grants include a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" (1981), the George Polk Award for Social Commentary (1993), the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award (1994), the Golden Plate Achievement Award (1995), Time magazine's "25 Most Influential Americans" list (1997), and a National Humanities Medal (1998).
Rosengarden began playing the drums seriously at the age of 12. After enrolling at the University of Michigan on a music scholarship, he performed with the Army and Air Force bands during his military service, 1944-45. After the war, he went to New York City, where he performed on a series of radio and television shows. Thereafter, he worked as a studio musician, recording as a percussionist with, among others, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and the orchestra led by Gil Evans, and Benny Goodman's band.
Rosengarden also played in ensembles at the NBC television studios and later led a band at ABC for Dick Cavett's show. He achieved wider attention as a member of the World's Greatest Jazz Band. He has appeared at most of the world's major jazz festivals, has performed with the NY Jazz Repertory Company and played often at the Rainbow Room in New York City, before it closed last year. Rosengarden is currently conductor of the Jerry Lewis M.D.A. Telethon, and of the Mary Tyler Moore J.D.A. Telethon. He has been a regular performer at the special jazz concert held at Hamilton each fall.
A 1962 graduate of Hamilton College, Walker is a career Senior Foreign Service officer. President Clinton appointed him ambassador to Israel in 1997. Previously he was U.S. ambassador to the Arab Republic of Egypt. Walker was also deputy permanent representative of the United States to the United Nations with ambassadorial rank from 1993 to 1994, and U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates from 1989 to 1992, through the period of the Gulf War.
Ambassador Walker has served extensively in the Middle East since his entry into the Foreign Service in 1967. In the course of his career, he has had tours overseas in Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia and Egypt. He was special assistant to the president's special representative for the Middle East peace negotiations from 1979 to 1981, and spent two years as executive assistant to the deputy secretary of state from 1982 to 1984.
Wellin came to Hamilton in 1947 after serving as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Infantry in Korea. He graduated in 1950, then earned a master's degree in business administration from the Harvard Business School in 1952. Wellin is the retired vice chairman of Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., former president of E.F. Hutton & Co., and former president of Reynolds Securities, Inc. He is currently chairman of the board of Moorco International Inc., in Houston. Wellin served as a charter trustee of Hamilton from 1969 to 1975, was re-elected in 1986, and now serves as a life trustee.
Wheeler has been the president of the Auburn Theological Seminary in New York since 1980, and director of the Auburn Center for the Study of Theological Education since its founding in 1991. She is a nationally recognized researcher, consultant and writer in the field of theological education. Recent publications include Being There: Culture and Formation in Two Theological Schools (co-authored with Jackson W. Carroll, Daniel O. Aleshire and Penny Long Marler, 1997), Shifting Boundaries: Contextual Approaches to the Structure of Theological Education (edited with Edward Farley, 1991), and Beyond Clericalism: The Congregation as a Focus for Theological Education (edited with Joseph C. Hough, 1988). Wheeler has also researched and written about congregations. She earned a bachelor's degree from Barnard College.
