Hamilton College has announced the names of two individuals and a couple who will be awarded honorary degrees at the college's 194th commencement on Sunday, May 21. Hamilton's commencement ceremony will begin at 10:30 a.m. in the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House.
The honorary degree recipients are Joseph S. Nye, Jr., the Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and the Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations; author and Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen; and broadcast journalist Bill Moyers and his wife, Public Affairs Television President Judith Moyers. Quindlen will deliver the Commencement address and Bill Moyers will offer the Baccalaureate sermon, which will be given on Saturday, May 20, at 3 p.m. in the Scott Field House.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
Joseph S. Nye Jr., the University Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University, is also the Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations and former dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
He received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Princeton University, did postgraduate work at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, and earned a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1964, and taught one of the largest core curriculum courses in the college. In December 1995, he became Dean of the Kennedy School.
From 1977 to1979, Nye was deputy to the Undersecretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology and chaired the National Security Council Group on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In 1993 and 1994 he was chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which coordinated intelligence estimates for the president. In 1994 and 1995, he served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.
In 2004, he published Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, Understanding International Conflict (5th edition), and The Power Game: A Washington Novel. Nye is co-author of Power & Interdependence, 1977, and Nuclear Ethics, 1986; author of Understanding International Conflict, 1993, and Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, 1990; and editor and co-author of The Making of America's Soviet Policy.
A fellow of the American Academy or Arts and Sciences and of the Academy of Diplomacy, Nye has been a senior fellow of the Aspen Institute, director of the Aspen Strategy Group and a member of the executive committee of the Trilateral Commission.
Anna Quindlen
Anna Quindlen is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and novelist and writes Newsweek's column "The Last Word." During the past 30 years, her work has appeared in America's most influential newspapers and magazines and on fiction and nonfiction bestseller lists.
She has written four bestselling novels: Object Lessons, One True Thing, Blessings and Black and Blue, which was a selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club. Quindlen has also published three collections of her columns: Living Out Loud, Thinking Out Loud and Loud and Clear, as well as How Reading Changed My Life and Imagined London. Her national bestseller, A Short Guide to a Happy Life, has sold more than one million copies. It was followed by Being Perfect, which also became a national bestseller.
While a columnist for The New York Times (1981-1994), Quindlen became only the third woman in the newspaper's history to write a regular column for its op-ed page when she began the nationally-syndicated "Public and Private." In 1992 Quindlen was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Three years later she left The Times and journalism to pursue a career as a full-time novelist.
Quindlen is a native of Philadelphia and a graduate of Barnard College, where she is chair of the board of trustees. She holds honorary degrees from more than a dozen American colleges and universities, was awarded the University Medal of Excellence by Columbia University, was a Poynter Fellow in Journalism at Yale and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1996. She will deliver Hamilton's commencement address.
Bill Moyers and Judith Davidson Moyers
Bill Moyers began his career as a cub reporter for the Marshall News Messenger at the age of l6. He then served as a founding organizer of the Peace Corps, a special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson, the publisher of Newsday, a reporter and anchor for public television, senior correspondent for the distinguished documentary series CBS Reports and senior news analyst for the CBS Evening News. Later, with his wife and creative partner Judith Davidson Moyers, he produced such ground-breaking series as Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith, Genesis, On Our Own Terms: Death and Dying in America and America's First River. Among their acclaimed documentaries are Earth on Edge, Trade Secrets and Surviving the Good Times. Before their retirement in 2004, Judith Moyers was executive editor and Bill Moyers was managing editor and anchor of NOW with Bill Moyers.
During his 30 years in the media, Moyers has received more than 30 Emmys from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, two Gold Batons, the highest honor of the annual Alfred. I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, nine Peabody awards and three George Polk Awards, including the Career Achievement Award.
Moyers' books include the best-sellers Listening to America, The Power of Myth, Healing and the Mind, The Language of Life and, most recently, Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times.
He is president of The Schumann Center for Media and Democracy.
Judith Davidson Moyers is president of Public Affairs Television, Inc. (PAT), an independent production company in which she collaborates with her husband, journalist Bill Moyers. PAT has produced some of public television's path-breaking series and specials and has won every major television award. Judith Moyers served as executive producer of major documentaries such as Earth on Edge, Free Speech for Sale, All Our Children, What Can We Do About Violence?, Sports for Sale and The Mythology of Star Wars. She was executive editor of Becoming American: The Chinese Experience, Healing and the Mind and the election-year series Listening to America.
Moyers served as a trustee and vice-chair of the State University of New York. She was a director of the Research Foundation of New York State and the Rockefeller Institute of Government, and a member of the New York State Judicial Selection Commission. Currently she is a director of the Public Agenda Foundation and the Hazelden Foundation.
Moyers has been recognized for her work as an advocate for children by the Girl Scouts of America, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the Christophers and the National Council of Churches. She has served as a United States Commissioner to UNESCO, a member of the White House Commission on Children, and a member of the National Governors' Association Task Force on Education and Economic Development.
Born in Dallas, she is a graduate of the University of Texas and holds several honorary degrees. She and Bill Moyers have been married for 50 years and have three grown children and five grandchildren.
