University Confers 6,194 Degrees

Under a bright blue sky, 6,194 graduates and one University president bid goodbye to Harvard at the University’s 350th Commencement on June 7.

In front of a packed Tercentenary Theater and amid much pageantry, outgoing President Neil L. Rudenstine presented degrees and welcomed graduates “into the fellowship of educated persons” during the morning exercises.

Rudenstine’s message of the day—the search for knowledge—flowed through the day’s events, as speakers touched on the importance of education and the impact of the Harvard experience.

“We have inspired each other to reach a little higher in our own studies and lives with our minds newly opened by the opinions and experiences of others,” said Corrinne Crawford ’01, who presented the Latin Oration.

Only graduating seniors were given an English translation to follow during the speech—allowing them to laugh at Crawford’s jokes while leaving the rest of the audience confused.

Later that afternoon, Rudenstine addressed the graduates, the Harvard community and the assembled guests for a final time.

He focused his comments on the “ideas and drives” that are the impetus for the existence of universities and the “well-springs” of the search for knowledge.

He explained that humans have an innate curiosity that helps explain their yearning for education, and proffered that the “quest for significant knowledge is completely absorbing and continuously demanding,” as he urged graduates to continue their education outside Harvard’s gates.

In closing, Rudenstine offered his thoughts on his tenure as the University’s 26th president.

“All of us present this afternoon have wagered a great deal together in these past ten years at Harvard. For my own part, I would not hesitate a moment to make the very same wager again—except for the convenient fact that there can be no repeat performances in life,” he said.

And, with a final “Au revoir!” he waved and sat down.

Later, commencement speaker Robert E. Rubin ‘60 offered graduates a lesson in decision-making and “thinking,” in a speech laced with anecdotes from his days as an undergraduate and a young financial analyst working on Wall Street.

On a more personal level, he spoke of the nobility of public service and asked graduates to contribute to the honorable professions of government and public service.

“We must attract to government a critical mass of people with the intellectual drive, the restless quest for understanding, and the effectiveness at decision-making that we have been discussing,” he said.

The University presented 11 honorary degrees, including doctor of letter degrees to poet John Ashbery, a doctorate in humane letters to Indian womens’ labor organizer Ela R. Bhatt and anti-violence activist Geoffrey Canada, a doctorate in science to chemist Isabella L. Karle and physicist Charles H. Townes.

The University also presented a doctorate in music to composer Leon Kirchner, and doctorate in law to philosopher Jürgen Habermas, economist Alice M. Rivlin, commencement speaker Rubin, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. ’38 and former Harvard Fellow Richard A. Smith ’46.

—Staff Writer Garrett M. Graff can be reached at ggraff@fas.harvard.edu.