Dear AUB Community members:
It gives me great pleasure to announce the names of this year’s recipients of honorary degrees. In a change from previous years, honorary doctorates will be awarded during the University’s 142nd commencement exercises on the Green Field instead of during a separate ceremony at Assembly Hall on the same day. This will allow all graduating students and their families to share in this meaningful tradition.
The five candidates, all internationally known in their fields, include the first female president of the Republic of Ireland; a renowned Lebanese musician—singer, composer, and oud player; a prolific scientist and university professor specializing in nanoscience and physical chemistry; a professor emeritus of astronomy and the history of science at Harvard University; and a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, currently Beirut Bureau Chief for the New York Times.
Mary Robinson has had a career full of firsts: the youngest-ever law professor at Trinity College, Dublin, the first female president of Ireland, and the first female Chancellor of Dublin University. A fervent champion of human rights, particularly the rights of women, she also served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002. She has continued her humanitarian work with initiatives targeting ethical globalization and climate justice and as a member of the Elders, an international group of elder statesmen who join together to find reasoned solutions to global problems.
Marcel Khalife, singer, songwriter, and master oud player, seeks to revive the Arab musical heritage of his country. A native of Amchit, Lebanon, he has circled the globe with his Al Mayadeen Ensemble giving concerts of songs and orchestral works. He has also composed music for the stage and soundtracks for feature films and documentaries. Khalife, well known for his support of the Palestinian cause, has set some of the poems of Mahmoud Darwish to music.
Owen Gingerich is professor emeritus of astronomy and the history of science at Harvard University and senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Well known for his academic study of astronomer Johannes Kepler and cosmologist Nicolaus Copernicus, he spent many years tracing extant editions of Copernicus’s radical sixteenth century defense of a heliocentric universe, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, to understand why it had been dubbed “the book nobody read.”
Mostafa El-Sayed is a renowned Egyptian-American physical chemist and leading nanoscience researcher. After teaching for 33 years in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California at Los Angeles, he moved to the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he heads the prestigious Laser Dynamics Laboratory. Professor El-Sayed and his group pursue research in nanotechnology, specifically in nanocatalysis, plasmonics, and nanomedicine. He has been actively researching a treatment for cancer using gold nanorods.
Lebanese-American journalist Anthony Shadid has been covering the Middle East for more than 15 years. Currently Beirut Bureau Chief for the New York Times, he has been awarded two prestigious Pulitzer Prizes for his coverage of the Iraq war and events in Lebanon and Palestine. Shadid has woven his experiences into two books, Legacy of the Prophet and Night Draws Near. Known for his gracious prose style, Shadid has also known the risks of his trade, having been shot in Palestine and recently held prisoner for a week in Libya.
AUB President Peter F. Dorman