(New York, NY - April 25, 2005) New School University announced today that it will hold its 69th Commencement ceremony on Friday, May 20, 2005 at 2:30 p.m., at the Theater at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. New School University President Bob Kerrey will address the graduates and confer the honorary degrees. Supreme Court JusticeStephen G. Breyer will deliver the commencement address, and sociologist Manuel Castells will offer the closing remarks during the ceremony. JusticeBreyer and Manuel Castells will join artist Jenny Holzer; historian David Levering Lewis; and playwright August Wilson in receiving honorary degrees. New School University expects to graduate 2,463 students at its Commencement Ceremony.
New School University will also present its University in Exile Award to the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Asociación Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo) for their work searching for Argentinean children and grandchildren who disappeared with their parents after being taken into custody by members of the Argentine police or security forces during Argentina’s “Dirty War,” from 1976 to 1983. They have acted as both detectives and human rights advocates in an effort to find and recover their grandchildren. The University in Exile Award was established in 1998 by the New School and is conferred upon those who advance the struggle for freedom, human rights, and democracy.
The Honorable Stephen G. Breyer is the most recently appointed justice to the Supreme Court bench. Born in 1938 in northern California, he graduated from Stanford University and then traveled to Oxford University on a Marshall Scholarship, where he earned a B.A. with First Class Honors. He holds an LL.B. from Harvard Law School, where he also was editor of the law review. Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg selected Justice Breyer to clerk for him during the 1964 term, during which he helped to draft an important privacy rights opinion. He later returned to Cambridge to begin his academic career at Harvard Law School. He also served as a special assistant to the Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Antitrust (1965-1967), as an assistant special prosecutor of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force (1973), and as special counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee (1974-1975). In l980, President Jimmy Carter appointed Justice Breyer to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, where he became chief judge in 1990. President Clinton nominated Justice Breyer to the Supreme Court for the seat vacated by Justice Harry A. Blackmun. He easily won confirmation in the Senate and took his place as the 108th Supreme Court Justice in 1994. Justice Breyer has been a frequent contributor to legal journals and is the author of a number of works including Breaking the Vicious Circle: Toward Effective Risk Regulation and Regulation and Its Reform.
A native of Spain, Manuel Castells holds the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication, Technology and Society at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, where he is also Professor of Sociology and Professor of Planning. He also is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and of City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley, and he is spending the current year as Research Professor at the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona. He graduated from the Sorbonne's Faculty of Law in 1964, received a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Paris, and also holds doctorates from the Sorbonne and the University of Madrid. Professor Castells began his academic career in 1967 at the University of Paris. In 1972 he published his first book, La Question Urbaine, which became a classic around the world. He was one of the intellectual founders of what came to be known as New Urban Sociology, publishing numerous works in this area, and, in 1998, he received the Robert and Helen Lynd Award from the American Sociological Association for his lifelong contributions in the fields of community and urban sociology. In 1983, he undertook the study of economic and social transformations associated with the information technology revolution,engaging in a cross-cultural approach to the subject by researching in the United States, Europe,Latin America, and Asia, which resulted in his trilogy The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. His current research, focusing on the social and economic implications of the Internet, so far has resulted in the publication of The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on Internet, Business, and Society.
Born in Ohio in 1950, conceptual artist Jenny Holzer received a B.F.A. in printmaking and painting from Ohio University in 1972 and an M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1977. She also completed the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Ms. Holzer is an abstract painter who turned to language to paint ideas and todisseminate those ideas within the public space. Since the late seventies, she has been working in the street and in public buildings, using media that would enable her work to blend in with the landscape. She is arguably most well-known for her “Truisms,” which she printed anonymously in black italic script on white paper, and wheat-pasted to building façades, signs, and telephone booths in lower Manhattan. Arranged in alphabetical order and comprised of short sentences, her “Truisms” inspired pedestrians to scribble messages on the posters and make verbal comments. Her work has been exhibited worldwide including at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Ms. Holzer has published numerous catalogues and monographs including Jenny Holzer: Truth Before Power; Jenny Holzer: Monterrey, 2001; and Jenny Holzer: Xenon. Her many awards include the Blair Award, presented by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1982, the Leone d’Oro award for best pavilion at the Venice Biennial in 1990, and the Public Art Network Award from the Americans for the Arts in 2004.
David Levering Lewis, biographer, historian, and scholar, holds a prominent place within a burgeoning group of prolific African-American authors who, particularly in the last two decades, have written extensively about race, about their lives, about the lives of others, and about America. Professor Lewis’ masterpiece, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, chronicles both the life and times of one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th Century. The recipient of numerous awards, his two volumes on the life of W.E.B. Du Bois won the Pulitzer Prize, the only time in the history of the award that both volumes of a biography have won. He also is the author of five other books, two edited collections, and numerous articles. Professor Lewis has had a long career as a university professor, and he is known especially for taking his responsibility as an educator and mentor most seriously. He is currently the Julius Silver University Professor and Professor of History at New York University. He is a recipient of fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also is a founding member of the Committee for Policy on Race and Justice. He graduated phi beta kappa from Fisk University in 1956 earning a B.A. in History and Philosophy. His Master’s degree in History is from Columbia University, and his doctorate is from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
August Wilson was born in 1945 and grew up in the Hill district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His childhood experiences would later inform his dramatic writings. He was catapulted to the forefront of the American theatre scene in 1984 with the success of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. The play was voted Best Play of the Year (1984-85) by the New York Drama Critics’ Circle, and by the early 1990's, he had established himself as the best known and most popular African-American playwright. Mr. Wilson also set for himself a daunting task - to write a ten-play cycle that explores the heritage and experience of African-Americans, decade-by-decade, over the course of the twentieth century. Each of his plays is a chapter in this remarkable cycle and focuses on what he perceives to be the greatest issue to confront African-Americans in that decade. His play, Fences, set in the 1950’s, opened on Broadway in the spring of 1987 to enormous critical acclaim and earned August Wilson his first Pulitzer Prize. The Piano Lesson, set in the 1930’s, earned Mr. Wilson another award from the Drama Critics' Circle, as well as his second Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a Drama Desk Award (1990). His ninth play, Gem of the Ocean, set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh in 1904, appeared on Broadway this winter. In addition to writing more than 20 plays that have been produced worldwide, he is the author of a book for a stage musical about jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton. Among his numerous awards are the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame Award and a National Humanities Medal awarded by the President of the United States in 1999.
New School University, with 8,000 matriculated students and 15,000 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 New School University 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.