NEW SCHOOL UNIVERSITY TO HOLD
67th COMMENCEMENT CEREMONY
ON WEDNESDAY, MAY 21, 2003 AT 2:30 PM
AT THE THEATER AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
New School University President Bob Kerrey to address
the graduates
Poet John Hollander to give commencement speech
and receive honorary degree
Honorary degrees will also be presented to architect
Charles Gwathmey, human rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim,
psychologist Daniel Kahneman, linguist and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva,
and philanthropist Peter Lewis
(New York, NY – May 13, 2003) New School University will hold its 67th Commencement Ceremony on Wednesday, May 21, 2003, 2:30 PM, at The Theater at Madison Square Garden in NYC.
New School University President Bob Kerrey will address the graduates and confer the honorary degrees. Poet John Hollander will be the commencement speaker and will receive an honorary degree. Seho Kim, Candidate for the Master of Fine Arts in Design and Technology at Parsons School of Design, will be the student speaker, and New School University Trustee Eugene M. Lang will deliver closing remarks. Honorary degrees will also be conferred upon architect Charles Gwathmey, human rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, psychologist Daniel Kahneman, linguist and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva, and philanthropist Peter Lewis.
New School University will award 2,299 degrees to students in eight academic schools at its Commencement Exercises. These divisions include the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, Eugene Lang College, The New School, Parsons School of Design, Mannes College of Music, the Jazz & Contemporary Music Program, the Actors Studio Drama School, and the Robert J. Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy.
2003 HONORARY DEGREE RECIPIENTS
CHARLES GWATHMEY
Charles Gwathmey has had a long and distinguished career with a broad range
of commissions including the Guggenheim restoration and addition, the Museum
of Contemporary Art in Miami, the University of North Carolina's College of
Architecture, and the Nanyang Polytechnic in Singapore. He received his Master
of Architecture degree from Yale University in 1962, where he won the William
Wirt Fellowship as the outstanding graduate and a Fulbright Grant. He has received
numerous awards since then including, in 1990, a Lifetime Achievement Award
from the New York State Society of Architects. In 1968, Mr. Gwathmey co-founded
the firm Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, which today has an international
reputation for architectural excellence. In addition to maintaining his architecture
practice, Mr. Gwathmey has held faculty positions at Pratt Institute, Cooper
Union, Princeton University, Columbia University, the University of Texas, and
the University of California at Los Angeles.
JOHN HOLLANDER
John Hollander is a distinguished and prolific poet and literary critic who
was born in New York City. His complex works examine the relationship between
poetry, music, art and literature. Known for his scholarship and intellectual
wordplay, Professor Hollander was chosen by W.H. Auden to participate in the
Yale Series of Younger Poets for his A Crackling of Thorns (1958). He
has written more than twenty volumes of poetry including Figurehead and Other
Poems (1999), Harp Lake (1988), and Spectral Emanations (1978).
His books of criticism include The Work of Poetry (1997) and Vision
and Resonance (1975). He also has written books for children and collaborated
on operatic and lyric works with such composers as Milton Babbitt, George Perle
and Hugo Weisgall. John Hollander's many honors include the Bollingen Prize,
the Levinson Prize and the MLA Shaughnessy Medal. A former Chancellor of The
Academy of American Poets, Professor Hollander is the Sterling Professor Emeritus
of English at Yale University.
SAAD EDDIN IBRAHIM
Saad Eddin Ibrahim is an internationally renowned sociologist and advocate for
democracy and human rights. He is the founder of the Ibn Khaldun Center for
Development Studies, a Cairo-based research organization created in 1988 for
the purpose of advancing applied social sciences with special emphasis on Egypt,
the Arab World and the Third World. Professor Ibrahim and his colleagues from
the Center were arrested in June 2000 on charges "of undermining the dignity
of the state and tarnishing its reputation," brought by Egyptian State
Security. On May 21, 2001, he was sentenced to seven years in prison, but was
released from prison in December 2002, pending a second retrial. On March 18,
2003, Professor Ibrahim was acquitted of all charges. Professor Ibrahim's many
professional appointments and activities include Secretary General of the Egyptian
Independent Commission for Electoral Review, President of Cairo's Union of Social
Professions, and he was a member of the World Bank's Advisory Council for Environmentally
Sustainable Development. Professor Ibrahim has authored numerous works including
Egypt, Islam and Democracy; The Copts of Egypt; Arab Society in Transition;
and The Islamic Awakening and Problems of the Arab World. He received
his B.A. from Cairo University and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington.
DANIEL KAHNEMAN
Daniel Kahneman has been the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Professor
of Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
at Princeton University since 1993. Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, he received his
B.A. from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his Ph.D. in Psychology from
the University of California. In 2002 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics
for his pioneering work integrating psychological research into economics, in
particular for his establishment of theory involving how human decisions can
at times vary from or be at odds with established economic theory. He is the
author of hundreds of scholarly articles, which have appeared in the preeminent
journals in his field, and he also has authored and co-authored many books.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Professor Kahneman holds numerous awards and
distinctions including the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the
American Psychological Society and the Hilgard Award for Lifetime Contribution
to General Psychology.
JULIA KRISTEVA
Julia Kristeva is a practicing psychoanalyst and a professor of linguistics
at L'Institut Universitaire de France. Professor Kristeva is one of the most
influential and prolific of the contemporary French intellectual writers, and
she is regarded as an outstanding critic who has popular appeal as well. Beginning
as a linguist and working alongside French semiotician Roland Barthes, Professor
Kristeva assimilated the work of Freud and Lacan, and became an analyst as well
as an academician. Her writings span the disciplines ranging from semiotics,
literary criticism, psychology, philosophy, politics, theology, and women's
studies to two semi-autobiographical novels. She is, perhaps, most well known
for her extensive study of Proust, Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience
of Literature, and her other numerous works include New Maladies of the
Soul, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, and Powers of Horror: An
Essay on Abjection. In 1987, in recognition of her profound contribution
to French intellectual culture, she was honored by the French government and
made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.
PETER B. LEWIS
Peter B. Lewis has been Chairman of The Progressive Corporation since 1965.
One of the nation's largest and most successful insurance companies, Mr. Lewis
built this company into an industry leader. Mr. Lewis also is one of America's
leading philanthropists, equally well known both for his philanthropy and for
the progressive causes he believes in. A passionate defender of civil liberties,
he also is a supporter of arts, from the Guggenheim Museum in New York City
to the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation and numerous other nonprofit
organizations, educational institutions and charities. He was instrumental in
helping to launch the career of architect Frank Gehry, who has designed a number
of the buildings sponsored by Mr. Lewis. Also a political activist, Mr. Lewis
currently is spearheading a ballot initiative in Ohio, called "Ohio Campaign
for New Drug Policies," to substitute treatment for prison for some nonviolent
drug offenders, and he has been active in a national effort to reform drug laws.
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New School University, with 7,000 matriculated students and 25,000
continuing education students, is a New York City university committed to critical
scholarship, artistic integrity, and ethical responsibility in the social sciences,
humanities, the arts and design. It is comprised of a liberal arts foundation
of three schools: The New School, Eugene Lang College and the Graduate Faculty
of Political and Social Science, and five professional schools: Parsons School
of Design, Mannes College of Music, Actors Studio Drama School, Milano Graduate
School of Management and Urban Policy, and the Jazz & Contemporary Music
Program. New School Online University offers one of the largest selections of
online courses in the nation. For further information on New School University,
call (212) 229-5600 or visit the Web site at www.newschool.edu.
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Directions to Madison Square Garden: By Subway: 1,2,3 or 9 (Seventh Avenue Lines), A, C, or E (Eighth Avenue Subway) to 34th Street/Penn Station. Also, B, D, F, N, R or Path to 34th Street/Avenue of the Americas (one block walk).