WILLIAMSTOWN - Four men and three women will receive honorary degrees at Williams College 216th Commencement, Sunday, June 5. Thomas Friedman, foreign affairs columnist, The New York Times, will be the principal speaker. Julian Bond, civil rights activist and politician, will be the baccalaureate speaker on Saturday, June 4.
In alphabetical order, the recipients are Julian Bond, Doctor of Humane Letters; Thomas L. Friedman, Doctor of Letters; Evelyn Glennie, Doctor of Music; Ellsworth Kelly, Doctor of Fine Arts; Jhumpa Lahiri, Doctor of Letters; Joseph L. Rice, III, Doctor of Laws; and Sally Shaywitz, Doctor of Science.
Thomas L. Friedman - Doctor of Letters
Mr. Friedman is a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize -- in 2002 for Distinguished Commentary, "for his clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat," and in 1983 and 1988 for International Reporting for his coverage of Israel and Lebanon.
He began his career in London as a general assignment reporter for United Press International. A year later, he was sent to Beirut, where he remained until he joined The New York Times in 1981. He returned to the United States for a year before becoming the Times' Beirut bureau chief. For the next 26 months, Mr. Freidman covered the events happening around him, including the Sabra and Chatilla massacres, the American embassy and Marine bombings, the P.L.O. split and the Israeli withdrawal from Beirut. In 1984, Mr. Friedman went to Jerusalem as Israel bureau chief.
In 1989, Mr. Friedman was appointed the NYT's chief diplomatic correspondent in Washington, D.C. Over the next four years, his travels around the world followed then-Secretary of State James Baker and the end of the cold war. In 1998, he was appointed chief White House correspondent and covered the transition to and the first year of the Clinton Administration.
Shifting his focus from politics to economics, Mr. Friedman became the newspaper's international economics correspondent in 1994. A year later, he became the NYT's foreign affairs columnist, the fifth person to hold the post in the paper's history and a post he holds today.
Mr. Friedman is the author of "The Lexus and the Olive Tree," which focuses on globalization as the key factor shaping world affairs today. He argues that globalization is not just a phenomenon, but rather the international system that evolved in the wake of the cold war. He views globalization as the integration of capital, technology, and information across national borders, creating a single global market and a "global village."
His 2002 book "Longitudes and Attitudes" is a compilation of his post-Sept. 11, 2001 biweekly columns, with commentary and a diary of his experiences and reactions during the period of crisis. He has said that the book is "not meant to be a comprehensive study of Sept. 11 and all the factors that went into it. Rather, my hope is that it will constitute a 'word album' that captures and preserves the raw, unpolished, emotional, and analytical responses that illustrate how I, and others, felt as we tried to grapple with Sept. 11 and its aftermath, as they were unfolding."
His most recent book, "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century" (2005), surveys the period between January 1, 2000 and March of 2004 in a search for the most meaningful events and representative trends, including the Sept. 11 attacks and war in Iraq, the increased technological connectivity and drift towards a more global community, with India and China and their "explosion of wealth in the middle classes" being case studies for the potential of globalization.
Mr. Friedman received his bachelor's degree in 1975 in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University. As an undergraduate, he spent semesters in Jerusalem and Cairo. After receiving his B.A., Friedman received a Marshall Scholarship to study at St. Antony's College, Oxford University. He received his master's degree in Modern Middle East Studies from Oxford.
Julian Bond - Doctor of Humane Letters
Mr. Bond is chairman of the Board of the NAACP, a position he has held since 1998.
From his college days as a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to his present chairmanship of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Julian Bond has been an active participant in the movements for civil rights, economic justice, and peace, and an aggressive spokesman for the disinherited.
Mr. Bond studied at Morehouse College, a traditionally African American college in Atlanta, where he became active in the Civil Rights Movement. He was a founder of the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights, which directed non-violent protests that led to integration of Atlanta's movie theaters, lunch counters, and parks. He helped to form SNCC and worked as its communications director editing its newspaper.
Mr. Bond began running for a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965. That year, he was elected to a one-year term, but members of the House voted not to seat him because of his outspoken opposition to the war in Vietnam. He ran again in 1966, won and again was barred by the Georgia House. But after winning his third election, the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Georgia House had violated Mr. Bond's rights in refusing him his seat.
Mr. Bond ultimately served four terms in the House and six terms in the Senate. At the 1968 Democratic Convention he helped unseat Georgia's regular delegates and was the first African-American to be nominated for vice-president even though he was too young to run. In the Senate, he was the first black chair of the Fulton County Delegation, the largest and most diverse in the upper house, and was involved with more than 60 bills that became law. His experiences in government led to the publication of a collection of his essays titled "A Time to Speak, A Time to Act," and a book, "Black Candidate – Southern Campaign Experience."
Mr. Bond has taught at Williams, Drexel University, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania. He is a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the American University in Washington, D.C., and teaches history at the University of Virginia.
Evelyn Glennie - Doctor of Music
Ms. Glennie is one of the world's foremost percussionists and the master of more than 1,000 traditional and unconventional percussion instruments from around the world.
Raised in Aberdeen, Scotland, she was musically gifted from an early age, and when she was 12, she began taking lessons after she saw a schoolmate playing percussion. She graduated with honors from Royal Academy of Music in London in 1985 and in the same year made her professional debut as the world's first full-time solo classical percussionist.
While countless pieces of music have been composed for the piano, violin, flute or cello, percussion repertory is limited, and in an effort to change that, Ms. Glennie has commissioned more than 100 new pieces. She has collected more than 1,400 percussion instruments and has created instruments herself. She has recorded numerous solo albums for RCA/BMG including "MacMillan: Veni, Veni, Emmanual"; "Wind in the Bamboo Grove"; "Drumming"; and "Shadow Behind the Iron Sun" and has performed with many of the world's great orchestras.
Ms. Glennie is the recipient of many prizes, including a number of Grammy awards, and the Queen's Commendation Prize for all round excellence, the highest award granted by London's Royal Academy of Music, along with many honorary doctorates of music. She became an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) in 1993.
Named Musical America's Instrumentalist of the Year in 2003, the magazine wrote: "No percussionist – for that matter, no ensemble of percussionists – has rivaled the accomplishments of Evelyn Glennie … who is to the percussion world what Andres Segovia and Jean-Pierre Rampal were to guitarists and flutists. Like those players, she has devoted herself to showing listeners … that a concert on her instrument can be a supremely musical event."
Ellsworth Kelly - Doctor of Fine Arts
Mr. Kelly is widely regarded as one of the most important abstract painters, sculptors, and printmakers working today.
"His works are concrete manifestations of instants of the most vivid visual intensity, palpable renderings of vision itself in all its luminous clarity," said one art critic.
Born in Newburgh, N.Y., Kelly studied art for two years at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn before volunteering for military service in 1943. After his military service, he attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and then went to Paris and enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he lived and studied for six years.
Returning to the United States in 1954, it was in New York City that he also began sculpting. His first solo show in New York was at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1956, and three years later he was included in "Sixteen Americans" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1970, Mr. Kelly left Manhattan to establish a studio in nearby Chatham, where he continued to work with freestanding sculpture. Over the years, his work has been exhibited in many of the most important galleries and museums in the world.
He has said of his style, "The most pleasurable thing in the world, for me, is to see something, and then translate how I see it. I have worked to free shape from its ground and then to work the shape so that it has a definite relationship to the space around it; so that it has a clarity and a measure within itself of its parts; and so that, with color and tonality, the shape finds its own space and always demands its freedom and separateness."
Jhumpa Lahiri - Doctor of Letters
Ms. Lahiri, winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is a master storyteller, weaving together tales of Indians living in America or India.
Born to Bengali parents in London in 1967, soon after, they moved to Kingston, R.I. She has spent considerable time, since childhood, with her extended family in Calcutta, India.
Ms. Lahiri received her bachelor's degree in English at Barnard College, and master's degrees in English, in creative writing, and in comparative studies in literature and the arts and a doctorate in Renaissance studies at Boston University. She chose to pursue her first passion, fiction, and her decision to become a writer had auspicious beginnings when the New Yorker Magazine published several of her short stories.
The strength of her stories lies in her probing examination of the relationships between her characters and how these interactions are impacted by Indian ideals and traditions. Her Pulitzer Prize winning "Interpreter of Maladies" is a compilation of short stories set both in New England and in Kolkota, India, and the "recurring themes of the barriers to and opportunities for human communication; community, including marital, extra-marital, and parent-child relationships; and the dichotomy of care and neglect," wrote author Noelle Brada-Williams. Ms. Lahiri is also the author of "The Namesake."
In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, which she won at age 32 -- one of the youngest writers to win one for fiction -- she has received a PEN/Hemingway Award, the American Academy of Arts & Letters Addison M. Metcalf Award, and an O'Henry Award. The Washington Post writes, "There is nothing accidental about Ms. Lahiri's success; her plots are as elegantly constructed as a fine proof in mathematics."
Joseph L. Rice, III '54 - Doctor of Laws
Mr. Rice has spent the major portion of his business career in private equity and is one of the founders of the industry.
He is the chairman of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, Inc., a private investment firm in New York City that manages a pool of capital of $3.5 billion. Its particular focus is on the purchase of subsidiaries (or divisions of larger companies) and/or private companies in their entirety. Since its founding in 1978, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, Inc. has acquired 34 businesses with sales in excess of $21 billion.
Previous to that, he had founded Gibbons, Green & Rice, a management buyout firm, in 1969. Mr. Rice worked at Laird Incorporated, an investment banking firm, from 1966 to 1969, and practiced law at Sullivan & Cromwell for six years before that.
He graduated from Williams in 1954. Following graduation, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served from 1954 to 1957. He then returned to school, receiving an LL.B. from the Harvard Law School in 1960.
Mr. Rice is a Trustee Emeritus of Williams. He was appointed Trustee in 1991 and served until 2002. He chaired the Committee on Private Equity Investments and the Budget and Financial Planning Committee, and served on the Alumni Relations and Development, Buildings and Grounds, Executive, and Finance committees. He is a member of the New York Major Gifts Committee, the Development Steering Committee, and served as fund raising chairman of the Unified Science Center project.
He is a director of Italtel SpA, Uniroyal Holding, Inc., and VWR International Inc., and a member of the board of trustees of The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, INSEAD'S International Council, and J. P. Morgan's national advisory board.
Sally Shaywitz - Doctor of Science
Dr. Shaywitz is professor of pediatrics and child study at Yale University School of Medicine, where she co-directs with her husband, Dr. Bennett A. Shaywitz, the Yale Center for the Study of Learning and Attention. Her research provides the basic framework: conceptual model, epidemiology, and neurobiology for the scientific study of learning disabilities, particularly dyslexia, in children.
She is also the principal investigator of the Connecticut Longitudinal Study, which has provided the fundamental framework for an informed public policy on reading and dyslexia. Her book, "Overcoming Dyslexia: A New and Complete Science-Based Program for Reading Problems at Any Level," is a comprehensive guide to helping parents and education professionals understand, identify, and overcome dyslexia.
She believes that early intervention and treatment is necessary, as "reading problems are not outgrown, they are persistent," and that a knowledgeable and proactive parent is often the critical factor responsible for transforming an unhappy struggling reader into a happy, proficient one.
Dr. Shaywitz reports on the website schwabLearning.org, "Today, the future for each dyslexic child and adult should be filled with hope. I am exhilarated by the extraordinary progress scientists have made in understanding dyslexia. I want people to know that it is possible to identify dyslexia early and accurately, to diagnose dyslexia precisely in older students and adults, and to provide highly effective treatments that lead to skilled reading."
In 2003, she was chosen as "One of the Best Doctors in America" and "One of America's Top Doctors." Dr. Shaywitz is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. She received her A.B. from the City University and her medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
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LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — Town meeting on Tuesday approved an almost $14 million fiscal 2027 budget, and approved bylaws for short-term rentals and signage, and for public safety vehicles.
Of the 20 warrant articles, one, Article 7, to use free cash to pay prior fiscal year bills of $941.27 was indefinitely postponed by Moderator David Rolle because the bills were for the fire association.
Some 247 of the town's more than 2,600 registered voters filled Lanesborough Elementary School, debating articles during a meeting that lasted more than three hours.
The town's 2027 spending plan is up more than 10 percent, with the main increases from higher enrollment in the regional schools and the McCann Technical School renovation project.
Voters approved the assessment of $7,586,284 for Mount Greylock Regional School. They also approved Article 11, which was the use of $16,298.48 in free cash for the McCann's roof and window replacement project so as not to impact the budget.
Ambulance Director Jen Weber is planning 24-hour coverage, which means more staff and a hike in her budget. Article 5 asked the town to appropriate $234,100 to operate the Ambulance Enterprise Fund for salaries and expenses, which passed.
Fire Chief Jeff DeChaine spoke to the audience on his articles and the need for a new truck to replace the 1996 fire truck, listed on the warrant articles for a total $813,366, which includes a $100,000 contingency cost on whether a 2026 model-year chassis can be secured before new emissions standards in 2027. If they get the 2026 chassis, that contingency likely won't be needed.
Cassidy Flynn scattered five hits in a complete-game effort in the circle as Lenox upset top-seeded Hoosac Valley, 3-2, in the quarter-finals of the Division 5 State Tournament. click for more
Brayden Durant struck out seven and walked one in a complete-game effort on the mound Saturday to pitch the Drury baseball team to a 6-0 win over Keefe Tech in the quarter-finals of the Division 5 State Tournament at Joe Wolfe Field. click for more
Jason Codey struck out 13, walked two and allowed just an infield single as the Generals earned a 7-1 win over Wahconah to claim their third straight regional title. click for more
Gracelyn Wright struck out eight, and Genevieve Lagess went 3-for-5 with four runs batted in as the Hurricanes beat Monson, 17-3, to claim their first Western Mass title in four years. click for more
For the boys, Ward Bianchi helped lead the way with a win in the shot put and a second place in the javelin as the Mounties finished 16 points ahead of runner-up Pittsfield (pending the results of the pole vault, which were unavailable at 11 p.m. Friday night). click for more
