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Gwen Ifill will Deliver Baccalaureate Address
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., April 28, 2003 — One of the driving forces behind today’s revolution in genomics, Dr. Eric Lander will be the principal speaker at Williams 214th Commencement on Sunday, June 8, 2003.
Gwen Ifill, moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and senior correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, will be the Baccalaureate speaker on Saturday, June 7.
President of the College Morton Owen Schapiro will confer honorary degrees on both of them, as well as on Michael R. Beschloss ’77, political historian; James MacGregor Burns ’39, Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential biographer; Monica Lozano, president of the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the United States; Thaddeus Lott, a leader in elementary school education; and Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
ERIC LANDER
Doctor of Science
Commencement Speaker
Eric Lander
Dr. Lander, a member of the Whitehead Institute and founder and director of the Whitehead Center for Genome Research, is recognized for his inspired commitment to the Human Genome Project. Under his leadership, the Center for Genome Research led the effort in constructing a catalog of the human DNA code or genome. The scientific venture, which began in October 1990, was expected to take 15 years and was completed in April this year, two years ahead of schedule.
“Generating the complete sequence of human DNA is the most exciting adventure in modern science,” Dr. Lander said. “Sequencing the human genome will give us new understanding of human development and a broad array of new tools for fighting human disease.”
But “sequencing the human genome is no mean feat” and Dr. Lander has compared the task “to assembling one complete set of the ‘Encyclopedia Britannica’ from 10 shredded copies. To reassemble the pieces, scientists feed them into a reading machine that looks for overlapping paragraphs, words, or phrases. Using these overlaps, the machine patches together a copy of the volume, one sentence at a time.”
His center at the Whitehead Institute, part of the academic consortium led by Dr. Francis S. Collins of the National Institutes of Health, completed roughly a quarter of the genome sequence, splitting the genome into large overlapping blocks of DNA, which were read individually. The New York Times called the feat remarkable, “not least because it was carried out by an unusually young staff, many of whom were fresh out of college and lack advanced degrees.”
Dr. Lander served as chairman of the group that analyzed the entire, completed genome sequence.
He is also responsible for creating widely used methods for studying complex genetic traits in humans, animals, and plants; employing population genetics to identify human disease genes; and classifying diseases based on patterns of gene expression. He and his colleagues have applied these methods to a wide range of medical problems, including cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and dwarfism.
In an interview in Technology Review, Dr. Lander said, “I think what biologists are going to be doing for the next decade is figuring out the circuitry of the genome by monitoring how genes are turned on and off and how all the proteins come on and off in the cell. A lot of technology is going to be needed to do that. … I see a real merger of physics, chemistry, biology, and computer science to be able to build these detectors and interpret their results.”
In addition to his research, Dr. Lander, a professor of biology, has taught MIT’s core introductory biology course for a decade, and in 1992 won the Baker Memorial Award for Undergraduate Teaching at MIT.
Dr. Lander, who at 17 won a $10,000 scholarship in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search with a paper on quasi-perfect numbers, earned his B.A. in mathematics from Princeton University in 1978 and his D.Phil. in Mathematics from the University of Oxford in 1981.
He was awarded a Rhodes in 1978; a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (known as the “genius awards”) in 1987 for his work in genetics; the Rhodes Memorial Award from the American Association for Cancer Research in 1995; the Dickson Prize in Medicine in 1997, and the Gairdner Foundation Award, considered one of the most prestigious international awards in medical research, in 2002.
In recognition of his “research on the application of mathematical and statistical approaches to molecular genetics,” he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1990. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
GWEN IFILL
Doctor of Humane Letters
Baccalaureate Speaker
Gwen Ifill
Ms. Ifill has covered the White House, Congress, government, and presidential campaigns for the Boston Herald American, the Baltimore Evening Sun, the Washington Post, The New York Times, and then for television audiences.
Her introduction to television came when she was asked by Maryland Public Television to be a panelist on its weekly program analyzing local issues. When she moved to Washington to work at the Post, she became a regular panelist on WETA’s roundtable discussion.
When Ms. Ifill moved from the Post to The New York Times’ Washington bureau in 1991, her first major assignment was following Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton. After the election, she was made a Congressional correspondent and then promoted to the White House beat before she left in 1994 to join NBC News.
At NBC News she covered politics, including presidential campaigns, key legislative issues in Congress, and the impeachment of President Clinton. Her reports appeared on the Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, Today, and on MSNBC.
When she was chosen to be moderator of PBS’ 33-year-old political talk show Washington Week in Review in 1999, she became not only the first female to host a prominent news show on national television, but the first African American as well. Producers at Washington Week heralded Ifill’s debut with an ad campaign that said, “TV’s Voice of Reason Has a New Face.”
“You don’t transcend being black,” she told the Washington Post the evening of her debut on Washington Week. “You broaden someone’s stereotype of what it means to be black. There are people who get nervous when you bring up the subject of race because we’re schooled in this country to think it’s a negative. I always think of it as a plus.”
She is also senior political correspondent and occasional anchor on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
“I can’t stress how important it is that young people know that anything is possible for them, and that if it means that a little black girl sitting in her living room somewhere sees me on TV and thinks ‘maybe I could do that,’ then I feel like my day’s work is done,” she told the Christian Science Monitor. “I want to be that kind of example.” She says she caught the “journalism bug” when she was a child sitting in front of her family’s TV set watching the news.
“Despite being a black woman in an industry that was until recent years dominated by white men, I can’t look at my career and say I’ve been held back,” she said in an interview for Broadcasting & Cable.
A 1977 graduate of Simmons College, she serves on the board of the Harvard University Institute of Politics and the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS ’77
Doctor of Humane Letters
Michael Beschloss
Mr. Beschloss ’77 is an award-winning historian specializing in the American presidency. He is the author of seven books, including his most recent work, the acclaimed New York Times bestseller “The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941-1945.” Publishers Weekly has called him an “assiduous researcher and engaging writer, who tries to make history relevant to current events.”
Mr. Beschloss said he writes history because he loved reading history. He became fascinated with history at seven when he visited Abraham Lincoln’s home in Springfield, Ill. He chose political history as a particular field, he told Adam Clymer of The New York Times, because he wants “to try to find in history, lessons that can help to guide leaders of our own times.”
His first book “Kennedy and Roosevelt: The Uneasy Alliance” (1980), was refashioned from his senior honors thesis at Williams, which he wrote under the direction of James MacGregor Burns ’39. It was published three years later, as Beschloss was completing an M.B.A. at Harvard.
He is the author of the national best sellers “Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964,” which The Wall Street Journal called “sheer marvelous history,” and “Reaching for Glory,” which The New York Times Book Review said was “an incomparable portrait of a president at work.”
Mr. Beschloss is also the author of “MAYDAY: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair,” “Eisenhower: A Centennial Life,” and “The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-1963.” He wrote “Sudden Victory: Bush, Gorbachev and the End of the Cold War” and “At Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War” with Strobe Talbott.
He has edited a number of books and policy studies and is a contributor of book reviews and articles to newspapers and periodicals, including Vanity Fair, The New York Times Book Review, TV Guide, U.S. News & World Report, and Washington Monthly. He is a regular commentator on PBS’ The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and a contributor to ABC News. He has repeatedly been named by the press as one of Washington’s most celebrated political historians.
Mr. Beschloss was a historian on the staff of the Smithsonian Institution (1982-86), a senior associate member at Oxford University in England (1986-87), and a senior fellow of the Annenberg Foundation in Washington, D.C. (1988-96).
He is now working on a history of Abraham Lincoln’s last days and his assassination.
JAMES MacGREGOR BURNS ’39
Doctor of Humane Letters
James MacGregor Burns
Professor Burns, who has devoted himself to the study of leadership in American political life, is the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Government, Emeritus, at Williams, and the Jepson Senior Scholar at the University of Richmond.
Professor Burns received the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Taminent Prize, Francis Parkman Prize, and the Woodrow Wilson Prize for his biographies, “Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox” and “Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom.”
His book “Leadership,” published in 1978 is considered by many the seminal work in the field of leadership studies. “My central intellectual concern throughout my adult life has been leadership,” he said, “especially political and intellectual leadership, whether I was doing political science, history, psychology, or biography.”
His leadership philosophy — a values-based, moral, result-oriented approach — has defined leadership in theory and in practice for a generation of scholars and international statesmen. In his 1972 book, “Uncommon Sense,” Professor Burns listed the three underlying values that all Americans and their leaders should be committed to: “defense of civil liberties, the abolition of poverty, and the protection of the environment.”
Professor Burns received his B.A. from Williams College in 1939, attended the National Institute of Public Affairs in 1939-40; earned his Ph.D. in government from Harvard University in 1947; and did postdoctoral work at the London School of Economics in 1949.
He served in the military during WW II as a combat historian in the Pacific Theater from 1943 to 1946. He participated in the invasions of Sampan, Guam, and Okinawa, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star and four Battle Stars, and produced “Okinawa: The Last Battle” (a collaboration) and “Guam: Operations of the 77th Division.” He joined the Williams faculty in 1947.
He helped found and has taught at the University of Maryland’s James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership.
Delegate to four Democratic National Conventions, he was a democratic candidate for Congress in 1958.
He is former president of the American Political Science Association and of the International Society of Political Psychology.
THADDEUS S. LOTT Sr.
Doctor of Humane Letters
Thaddeus S. Lott Sr.
Dr. Lott is an educational innovator driven by a simple creed: “Students given opportunity and direction can learn.”
As principal of the Mabel B. Wesley Elementary School in the predominantly black community of Acres Homes in Houston, he built Wesley’s reputation as a school that academically rivaled white suburban schools. His unconventional teaching methods gained national recognition in 1989, when his first graders were reading at the third-grade level, and fifth-graders were working eighth-grade math problems.
Dr. Lott was so successful at Wesley, that in 1995, the board of education approved a partnership that included Wesley and three other schools, establishing the first cooperative charter in the state of Texas.
He was named the project manager for the charter, which became the Coalition for School Improvement.
Dr. Lott’s “direct instruction method” is a form of basic skills education and a strong curriculum, now known as “Reading Mastery and Connecting Math Concepts.”
“I searched for and I think I found the best education concepts available,” Dr. Lott said. “If my staff and I find better ways of educating our students, we would not hesitate a minute in implementing the new concept. The children are what matter, always the children.
“Most of my children do not have the trappings of self-esteem — good clothes, good toys, vacations, and the like. [My] commitment is to give these children a foundation for more enduring self-esteem, that is, intellectual independence.”
He received B.S. and M.E.D. degrees from Texas Southern University and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Liberty University.
MONICA CECILIA LOZANO
Doctor of Humane Letters
Monica Cecilia Lozano
Ms. Lozano is the president and chief operating officer of La Opinion, the nation’s largest Spanish-language daily newspaper. Founded by her family in 1926, the newspaper reaches 680,000 readers daily.
Ms. Lozano has worked at the newspaper for 17 years. She served as the associate publisher through 1999, and then was editor for four years and managing editor for six.
The newspaper has been recognized for its reporting on social, civic, and political issues, and Ms. Lozano is widely regarded as the newspaper’s conscience, tackling important social issues such as AIDS, prenatal care, and immigration.
Under her direction, La Opinion has assumed a largely educational role in the Latino community, particularly among immigrants. The newspaper aims to explain, Ms. Lozano said, “political and economic systems rather than just report the news of the day. We never assume that everybody knows what a straw poll is or how a primary works.”
The California Journal agreed: “This basic type of information serves as a foundation for the political involvement, which will put the myth of the Latino as a silent minority in California to rest for good.”
From 1999 to 2001, Ms. Lozano served on the California State Board of Education, and was its president for the 2000-01 session.
Since 1991, she has served as a trustee of the University of Southern California. In December 2001, California Governor Gray Davis appointed her a regent of the University of California system.
She has served on the California Post Secondary Education Commission, the State Legislature’s Joint Advisory Committee on Vocational Education, the California Citizen’s Commission on Higher Education, and the Public Policy Institute of California. She was also vice chair of the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project, a $100 million school-reform initiative.
She received an undergraduate degree in political science from the University of Oregon. She later attended San Francisco City College, from which she received a degree in printing technology.
PAUL VOLCKER
Doctor of Laws
Paul Volcker
As chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System during one of the most turbulent fiscal periods in U.S. history, Mr. Volcker helped lower double-digit inflation rates and helped pave the way for the economic recovery and expansion that followed.
Chairman from 1979 to 1987, he served both Democratic and Republican administrations. Time magazine called him “perhaps the second most powerful man in Washington.” The New York Times said “he was the Government official credited with seeing the country through one of its most difficult economic eras since the Depression, a period of soaring inflation that he helped tame with a tough recession.”
Immediately before becoming chairman, Mr. Volcker was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the principal operating arm of the System.
In the course of his career, Mr. Volcker worked in the federal government for almost 30 years, serving under five presidents. After completing his second term as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, he joined the firm of James D. Wolfenson, Inc., an investment banking firm, as chairman. He retired upon the merger of that firm in 1996 with the Bankers Trust Company.
Mr. Volcker also served as the first Frederick H. Schultz Professor of International Economic Policy (now Emeritus) at Princeton University and volunteer chairman of an earlier Commission on Public Service studying problems arising in attracting, motivating, and retaining quality people necessary for government to function effectively. Both of those activities reflected Mr. Volcker’s continuing interest in improving the professionalism and effectiveness of public service.
Mr. Volcker graduated from Princeton University in 1949 and attended Harvard University’s Graduate School of Public Administration, earning a Master’s Degree in political economy and government in 1951. He did postgraduate work at the London School of Economics.
END
Published April 28, 2003
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