Commencement Speaker — Honorary Doctorate of Humanities
Richard Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations, a position he has held since 2003. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to helping its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators, students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries.
Haass is the author or editor of 11 books on American foreign policy, including his newest release, War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars (Simon and Schuster, May 2009) and a book on management, The Bureaucratic Entrepreneur: How to Be Effective in Any Unruly Organization.
From 2001 to 2003, he was director of policy planning for the Department of State, where he was a principal adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Confirmed by the U.S. Senate to hold the rank of ambassador, Haass also served as U.S. coordinator for policy toward the future of Afghanistan and U.S. envoy to the Northern Ireland peace process. For his efforts, he received the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award.
From 1989 to 1993, he was special assistant to President George H. W. Bush and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the staff of the National Security Council. In 1991, Haass was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal for his contributions to the development and articulation of U.S. policy during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Previously, he served in the Departments of State (1981-85) and Defense (1979-80) and was a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate.
Haass also was vice president and director
of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, the Sol M.
Linowitz visiting professor of international studies at Hamilton College,
a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy
School of Government, and a research associate at the International
Institute for Strategic Studies. A Rhodes
Scholar, he holds his bachelor’s degree from Oberlin and a master’s
degree and PhD from Oxford University. He has received honorary doctorates
from Hamilton College, Franklin & Marshall College, and Georgetown
University.
Reverend Professor Peter John Gomes
Baccalaureate Speaker
The Reverend Peter John Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in The Memorial Church, Harvard University, has served since 1970 in The Memorial Church. A member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and of the Faculty of Divinity of Harvard University, Dr. Gomes holds degrees from Bates College and from the Harvard Divinity School, plus thirty-seven honorary degrees. His many honors include Harvard University’s Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award and the Phillips Brooks House Association Outstanding Supporter Award; and The Roosevelt Institute Freedom of Religion Award. He is an Honorary Fellow of Emmanuel College, The University of Cambridge, England, where The Gomes Lectureship is established in his name.Widely regarded as one of America’s most distinguished preachers, Professor Gomes fulfills preaching and lecturing engagements throughout America and the United Kingdom. In 2007 he was appointed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to membership in The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem; and he participated in the presidential inaugurations of Ronald Wilson Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush. His New York Times and national best-selling books have been translated into several languages, and he has published eleven volumes of sermons as well as numerous articles and papers.
Former trustee of The Public Broadcasting Service and The Pilgrim Society of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Professor Gomes serves as trustee of such institutions as The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and The National Cathedral School in Washington, DC.
Profiled by Robert Boynton in The New Yorker, and interviewed by Morley Safer on 60 Minutes, Professor Gomes was included in the premiere issue of Talk magazine in its feature article, ‘The Best Talkers in America: Fifty Big Mouths We Hope Will Never Shut Up.’
Honorary Doctorate of Humanities
Bobbie Brown Knable served as dean of students at Tufts University from 1980 through 1999. One of the first African American women to rise to such a prominent position at a major university, she was instrumental in redefining student services on Tufts' primarily residential campus to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student body.
Knable earned a Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1958. She arrived at Tufts in 1970 as an assistant professor of English and in 1972 was appointed director of Resumed Education for Adult Learners, an undergraduate degree program for urban women who were leaders in community organizations but who possessed little or no college training.
In 1975, Knable was appointed dean for freshmen and associate dean of undergraduate studies. Later, as dean of students, and in an effort to build a more supportive student environment, she significantly expanded health and counseling services and student activities; she also established the Asian American Center, the Latino Center, the Women's Center, and the Tufts Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Center.
Knable's interest in educational issues extended beyond Tufts. For six years she was a commissioner for the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, the collegiate accrediting body in the Northeast, and served on the boards of Pine Manor College and Vermont Academy preparatory school. She was president of the Council on Higher Education for Urban Women in Boston and a steering committee member of the Massachusetts Association of Women Deans, Administrators, and Counselors and the New England College Alcohol Network. Knable currently serves on the board of trustees for Bennington College and is vice chair of the board of trustees for City on a Hill Public Charter High School. She is an elected board member of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association and serves on the board of the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, a psychoanalytic training program for licensed mental health practitioners.
Honorary Doctorate of Science
A pioneer in children’s health care
issues, Martha Lipson Lepow is a leading pediatric infectious disease
specialist. A 31-year professor and
head of pediatric infectious diseases at Albany Medical College, she
has served there as director of the Clinical Studies Center, director
of the Pediatric Residency Program, and director of the Cystic Fibrosis
Center. She is also the medical director of one of 10
New York State Centers of Excellence in Pediatric and Adolescent HIV
Care. An advocate of childhood immunization,
Lepow has served on a number of national committees, including those
of the National Institutes of Health, addressing this and other topics
related to children. She also was a member of the American Academy of
Pediatrics Red Book committee and served as editor of the publication,
which contains guidelines for the handling of immunizations and infectious
diseases in children. She regularly lends her expertise to the media
and has authored or contributed to numerous medical publications.
A native of Cleveland, Lepow graduated from Oberlin College in 1948. She continued her studies at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, where she was one of six women in a class of 84 graduates. She took a fellowship in infectious disease in the then newly developed “virus lab” at the former City Hospital of Cleveland (now Metro Health). There, she worked under Dr. Frederick Robbins, who shared the Nobel Prize in physiology in 1954 for isolating the polio virus in tissue culture. Lepow helped Robbins work on trials of the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines. Afterward, she served on the pediatrics faculty at Case Western Reserve University and as an infectious disease specialist at City Hospital of Cleveland from 1959 to 1967. Lepow and her late husband, Dr. Irwin H. Lepow, then became founding faculty members at the University of Connecticut Medical School, where she taught from 1967 to 1978 and started the department of pediatrics. In 2007, the mayor of the city of Albany declared March 28 "Martha Lepow Day" to honor her service to the field of children's medicine and the positive impact she has made on countless lives.
Honorary Doctorate of Humanities
A native of Cleveland, Adam Lewis has been a major contributor to the success of environmentally sustainable building projects across the United States for more than a decade. As a businessman, philanthropist, and environmentalist, he has contributed to the building of the Aldo Leopold Center in Wisconsin, the David Brower Center in Berkeley, Calif., the science building at Furman University, and the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies at Oberlin.
Lewis is also a principal donor behind
efforts to fashion alternative and sustainable prosperity in the Appalachian
Mountains to replace the current destructive practice of mountaintop
removal mining. He is engaged in projects to halt
climate change by funding an action plan for President
Obama’s administration that will include a new energy policy built
on efficiency, technological prowess, and renewable sources of energy.
Lewis holds an honorary doctorate from Furman University and currently
serves on the board of Sustainable Settings, a non-profit organization
that works to inspire individuals and communities to embrace integrated
solutions for sustainable development.
Honorary Doctorate of Science
A luminary in the field of neuroscience, Robert Wurtz has devoted his life's work to exploring the neurobiology of vision and eye movements and how the brain processes sensory information for perception and the initiation of movement. Wurtz graduated from Oberlin in 1958 and went on to earn a PhD at the University of Michigan. There he worked in the laboratory of James Olds, whose research led to the discovery of a “reward circuit” in the brain that has proven important for addiction research. In 1966 Wurtz joined the Laboratory of Neurobiology at the National Institutes of Mental Health and began studying the visual systems of monkeys. He and fellow scientist Ed Evarts developed ground-breaking methods for studying movement and perception in primates, which has since provided neurobiologists with tremendous insight into similar systems of the human brain.
Wurtz also founded the Laboratory of
Sensorimotor Research within the National Eye Institute at the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1978, where he continues his work as an
NIH Distinguished Investigator. The laboratory has become one of the
preeminent centers in the world for the study of vision and eye movements
and has produced many leaders in the field of visual systems neuroscience.
Wurtz has been elected to a number of the nation’s
top scientific societies, including the National Academy of Sciences,
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Society for Neuroscience, the Council
of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine.
Honorary Doctorate of Humanities
Rev. Lawrence Neale Jones has a long and distinguished career in public service and higher education. Born in West Virginia, Jones earned a bachelor’s degree at West Virginia State College in 1942 and a master’s degree at the University of Chicago in 1948. After two tours of duty with the United States Army, he earned a bachelor of divinity degree at the Oberlin Graduate School of Theology in 1956 and a PhD at Yale University in 1961. Four years later he was appointed dean of students at the Union Theological Seminary, the first African American appointed to an administrative position in a predominately white theological institution. He was later promoted to professor of African American church history and acting president, and he also served as the dean of Union Theological Seminary. In his positions at Union, he recruited notable African American scholars C. Eric Lincoln and James H. Cone. In 1975, Jones was appointed dean of Howard Divinity School, where he remained for 16 years. During his time at Howard, he succeeded in building the university’s library resources and prestige and more than tripled the student body.
In addition to his administrative endeavors, Jones has served as a leader in the academic and religious community, filling various offices in the Association of Theological Schools, the Society for the Study of Black Religion, United Church Board of World Ministries, the United Church of Christ, the National Committee of Black Churchmen, and a number of other boards and councils. Now retired, he remains an active scholar—his book, African Americans and the Christian Churches, 1619–1860—was published in 2007 and is the most recent in a long line of publications.
Alumni Medal
Roberta Maneker has consistently volunteered her time, energy, and talents to Oberlin College for more than 50 years. She has held many leadership roles as an alumna, including membership on the Board of Trustees from 1997 to 2006, and as president of the Alumni Association from 1989 to 1991. She has served as president of the Oberlin Club of New York and as an alumni admissions interviewer in Westchester County, New York. She served on the 1995 Presidential Search Committee and the Allen Memorial Art Museum Director Search Committee. She is a current member of the Allen Memorial Art Museum’s visiting committee, which she chaired from 2002 to 2006. In 1999 she was the editor of In Their Shadow, In Their Light, a book detailing personal connections between Oberlin alumni and the professors that impacted their lives. She received the Alumni Certificate of Appreciation in 1993. Maneker earned a bachelor’s degree in Religion and English literature at Oberlin in 1957, and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Maneker chaired her 50th Reunion Gift
Committee, which raised $6.7 million to create the 1957 Distinguished
Professorship Award to recognize and reward non-tenured faculty in both
the college and the conservatory for outstanding contributions to undergraduate
education. She has been a member of the John Frederick Oberlin Society
since 1985. Outside of Oberlin, She has had a successful career as a marketing/public relations executive,
and as a freelance writer. She was
vice president of communications at the Direct Marketing Association
from 1983 to 1987 and senior
vice president, corporate communications, at
Christie’s from 1987 to 1994. She has written for Arts & Antiques
Magazine, Traditional Home, New York Magazine, and
Christie’s International Magazine. She served as a trustee of
the Jewish Home and Hospital,
New York, from 1996 to 2004 and chair
of its Manhattan Division from 2000 to 2003.
Distinguished Service Award
Revs. Mary and Steve Hammond have been
leaders in the Oberlin community for 30
years. Since 1985 they have served as co-pastors of Peace Community
Church, where their work focuses on promoting peace and justice in the
Oberlin community and on connecting Oberlin College
students with the local community. The church employs an Oberlin College
student as a Peace and Justice intern and also holds monthly peace potlucks;
both initiatives strive to connect campus and community groups with
shared objectives. The Hammonds are also affiliates in the Oberlin College
Office of Religious and Spiritual Life and have worked with the student
group Ecumenical Christians of Oberlin since 1993.
Rev. Mary Hammond, who has taught piano privately for 20 years, is an active participant in Oberlin community organizations and events. She served on the board of the Oberlin Public Schools from 1994 to 1998, on the executive committee of the InterAgency Council, on the boards of Oberlin Community Services Council and Oberlin Hot Meals, as co-coordinator of Oberlin Area Cooperating Ministries, and as a coordinator of the Oberlin CROP WALK. She holds a master’s degree in piano performance from the University of Alabama and a master’s degree in history and theology from Ashland Theological Seminary.
Rev. Steve Hammond serves as director
of Ohio Campus Ministries, on the Oberlin Juneteenth Committee, and
is involved with the Alternatives to Military Service project at Oberlin
High School. He has served on the board of Oberlin Seniors, Inc., and
local committees that resulted in the creation of Splash Zone and the
new Oberlin Community Services building. He helped found The Bridge,
Oberlin's community technology center, and was its first interim director.
Since September 2001, he has organized a weekly peace vigil on Tappan
Square. From 1981 until 1991 he served as the
Protestant chaplain for the Lorain County Juvenile Detention Home and
on the staff of the Parenting for Peace and Justice Network. Hammond
earned a bachelor’s degree at Indiana State University and a master
of divinity degree at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary.
