Kennedy To Receive Honorary Degree

Senator Edward M. Kennedy ‘54-’56 will be among 11 honorees receiving degrees from the University, according to a program circulated at Wednesday’s dinner for the distinction’s recipients. But unlike his 10 fellow recipients, he will not receive the degree at today’s Commencement exercises.

Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor two weeks ago, and is recovering from surgery at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., making travel difficult.

In a highly unusual arrangement, Kennedy will be awarded the honor at “an appropriate future occasion,” said a Harvard spokesman, who added that the senator had originally been slated to attend the event.

Also receiving degrees will be spiritual leader, the Aga Khan; Yale developmental psychologist James P. Comer; Princeton art historian Wen C; Fong, Columbia neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel; federal judge Damon J. Keith, women’s historian Gerda Lerner, Stanford computer scientist John McCarthy, University of Chicago biologist Janet D. Rowley, author and commencement speaker J. K. Rowling, and former Harvard Medical School Dean Daniel C. Tosteson.