Honorary Degree Recipients
Naomi Oreskes
Doctor of Science
Naomi Oreskes is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. She is an internationally renowned earth scientist, science historian, and author of both scholarly and popular books and articles on the history of earth and environmental science. Her authored or coauthored books include The Rejection of Continental Drift (1999), Plate Tectonics: An Insider’s History of the Modern Theory of the Earth (2001), Merchants of Doubt (2010), The Collapse of Western Civilization (2014), Discerning Experts (2019), Why Trust Science? (2019), and Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know about the Ocean (2021).
Oreskes has been a leading voice on the science and politics of anthropogenic climate change. Her 2004 essay “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” (Science 306: 1686)—the first peer-reviewed paper to document the scientific consensus on this crucial issue—has been cited more than 2,500 times. It was featured in the landmark Royal Society publication, “A Guide to Facts and Fictions about Climate Change,” and in the Academy Award–winning film, An Inconvenient Truth. Her 2010 book, Merchants of Doubt (coauthored with Erik M. Conway), has been translated into nine languages and was made into a documentary film produced by Participant Media and distributed by SONY Pictures Classics. Her 2014 TED Talk, “Why We Should Trust Scientists,” has over 1.6 million views.
In 2018 she was named a Guggenheim Fellow for a book project with Erik M. Conway, The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market. It was released by Bloomsbury Press in February 2023, and has been widely reviewed, including in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the New Yorker.
Imad Abu Kishek
Imad Abu Kishek was elected president of Al-Quds University (AQU) in 2014, after three years as executive vice president and more than a decade as vice president for administrative and financial affairs. Abu Kishek has fostered a spirit of innovation and dynamism at AQU, with a focus on the advancement of entrepreneurship. He has also nurtured a culture of critical inquiry through his support for Al-Quds Bard College (AQB), established in partnership with Bard in 2008 and the only liberal arts dual degree program with an American university in Palestine. A recognized leader of the higher education sector, Abu Kishek has received numerous honors, including the Biagio Andò Prize for his contributions to fostering a society focused on human rights and advancing scientific research. He holds a PhD in public policy from Northeastern University and a bachelor of engineering from Al-Quds University. Abu Kishek, professor of public policy, is AQU’s fourth president.
El Anatsui
El Anatsui is a Ghanaian sculptor who has spent much of his career living and working in Nigeria. He is one of the most highly acclaimed artists in African history and among the most prominent contemporary artists working in the world today. Anatsui currently runs a robust studio practice in Nsukka, Nigeria and Tema, Ghana.
Anatsui uses resources that are typically discarded, such as liquor bottle caps, cassava graters, and newspaper printing plates to create sculpture that defies categorization. His embrace of these materials reflects his interest in reuse and transformation, and an intrinsic desire to connect to his continent while transcending the limitations of place. He is known particularly for large-scale sculptures that are meticulously fabricated yet malleable. Anatsui’s work interrogates the history of colonialism and draws connections among consumption, waste, and the environment through his unique practice.
David C. Banks
David C. Banks is chancellor of New York City Public Schools, former president and CEO of the Eagle Academy Foundation, and founding principal of the Eagle Academy for Young Men, the first school in a network of innovative all-boys public schools in New York City and Newark. Banks’s vision of education emphasizes a partnership between schools and communities based on the guiding principles of academic excellence, leadership, and character development. With the Eagle Academy, he set out to prove that a high-quality college preparatory education for young men of color can be provided in a public-school setting.
David is a graduate of Rutgers University and received his JD from St. John’s University School of Law. In May 2014, David was awarded an honorary doctorate degree in education from Wheelock College at Boston University.
R. Howard Bloch
R. Howard Bloch is Sterling Professor of French and Humanities at Yale. A graduate of Amherst College and Stanford University, he has taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo; University of California, Berkeley; and Columbia University. He has written on a variety of topics in and around medieval literature, art, architecture, and social history, as well as on the creation of medieval studies in the nineteenth century. His most recent books are One Toss of the Dice: The Incredible Story of How a Poem Made Us Modern (2016) and Paris and Her Cathedrals (2022). Bloch holds a medal from the Collège de France, and he is an officer in the French Order of Arts and Letters, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and member of the American Philosophical Society.
Richard G. Frank ’74
Alumni/ae Honorary Degree
Richard G. Frank ’74, PhD, is Margaret T. Morris Professor of Health Economics Emeritus at Harvard Medical School, and a senior fellow in economic studies and director of the Center on Health Policy at the Brookings Institution. He served as the deputy assistant secretary for planning and evaluation in the Department of Health and Human Services and directed the Office of Disability, Aging, and Long-Term Care Policy. His research is focused on the economics of mental health and substance-abuse care, prescription drug markets, and long-term care policy. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 1997. He is coauthor with Sherry Glied of the book Better But Not Well: Mental Health Policy in the United States Since 1950 (2006).
Carla Hayden
Carla Hayden was sworn in as the 14th Librarian of Congress on September 14, 2016. Hayden, the first woman and first African American to lead the national library, was nominated to the position by President Barack Obama on February 24, 2016, and her nomination was confirmed by the US Senate on July 13 of that same year. Hayden served previously as CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, deputy commissioner and chief librarian of the Chicago Public Library, and assistant professor for library and information sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. She received a BA from Roosevelt University and her MA and PhD from the Graduate Library School of the University of Chicago.
Rachel Weisz
Actress Rachel Weisz is known for portraying bold characters and working with visionary directors. She has added the role of producer to her credits as she seeks out engaging material with authentic voices through her production company, Astral Projection. A graduate of English literature from Trinity Hall, Cambridge University, she cofounded a theater group during her student years called Talking Tongues, which was the winner of the Guardian Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Her stage work includes Mike Nichols’s Betrayal on Broadway, the off-Broadway production of the Public Theater’s Plenty, and the West End revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, which won her a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress for her performance as Blanche DuBois. Her television and film work includes Dead Ringers, The Favourite, Disobedience, My Cousin Rachel, The Deep Blue Sea, The Lobster, The Mummy, and critically acclaimed The Constant Gardener, for which she earned a Screen Actors Guild Award, Golden Globe Award, and Academy Award.