President Bill Clinton will deliver the keynote address at the College's 225th Commencement ceremonies on June 11, the White House announced Thursday. Clinton will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree.
The other honorary degree recipients are Sidney Altman, a Nobel Laureate in chemistry; Rita Dove, Poet Laureate of the United States; Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and William H. Gray III, president of the United Negro College Fund.
British actor Sir Derek Jacobi, Duke University President Nannerl Keohane, author Anna Quindlen and Derek Walcott, a Nobel Laureate in literature, will also receive honorary degrees.
First Lady Hillary Clinton has also been invited to Commencement to receive an honorary degree, but she has not given a definite answer yet, College President James Freedman said in an interview Friday.
"I haven't heard from her yet, so it's still a possibility," Freedman said. But, he added, "we can wait until the last minute for her to say yes."
A spokeswoman for the First Lady said Friday a decision has not been made yet whether Mrs. Clinton would attend Commencement.
Clinton is the second sitting U.S. president to deliver the College's Commencement address. President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke in 1953.
Freedman said he was excited to have Clinton speak at Dartmouth. "It's a great honor," Freedman said. "Of all the private institutions, Clinton has chosen to speak at ours."
Freedman said he found out that Clinton had accepted around March 8, when a spokesman for Clinton called Freedman to inform him that the President had accepted Dartmouth's invitation.
"I knew he wanted to do it," Freedman said. Freedman, currently on a six-month sabbatical from the College, said he will return to campus in early June and plans to take part in the Commencement ceremonies.
Clinton was invited to give the Commencement address for the Class of 1994, but was unable to attend because he was in Europe. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich '68 delivered last year's address.
History Professor Gene Garthwaite, who chairs the faculty's Council on Honorary Degrees, said a main reason behind the invitation to Clinton was vocal interest from various campus groups, especially the student body.
The council recommends candidates to the College Board of Trustees to receive honorary degrees. The council is composed of faculty from the college and the three professional schools and the senior class president. The Trustees have final approval on honorary degrees.
"Students will always remember that the President spoke at their Commencement," Garthwaite said in an interview last night. "I imagine that students are really excited."
Garthwaite said a lot of work is involved in convincing the President to accept a school's invitation to speak at Commencement.
"It takes a lot of work," Garthwaite said. "After the invitation, you need a lot of coordination to keep the invitation in front of him."
Freedman, a personal friend of Clinton, wrote to the Clinton in November asking him to deliver the Commencement address this June. Similarly, Eisenhower was invited in 1953 by then College President John Sloan Dickey, a friend of Eisenhower.
Freedman said after he wrote Clinton, he saw the President at the Renaissance Weekend in Hilton Head, N.C., an annual gathering of leading American intellectual and cultural figures. Both Clinton and Freedman have attended the event for a number of years.
"I saw him on New Year's Eve and told him I hoped this was the year," Freedman said. "He said, 'We've got an awful lot of requests.'"
Class of 1995 President Alyse Kornfeld, the only student on the Council on Honorary Degrees, took the unusual step of also writing to Clinton. Usually only one letter, written by the College President, is sent by the council to invite the Commencement speaker.
"Being the only student on the committee, I thought it was my obligation to write a letter on behalf of the student body," Kornfeld added. "I thought the letter would give Dartmouth an extra dimension."
Kornfeld said her letter gave Clinton a brief background on the history of the College and tried to demonstrate the role the College plays on the national political scene.
Clinton's speech at Dartmouth will be the final in a series of three commencement speeches he will deliver this spring. The other two speeches will be at Michigan State University on May 5 and at the U.S. Air Force Academy on May 31.
A White House press release stated Clinton will "outline to the 1995 college graduates the new realities of the world they will be inheriting -- the challenges they will face, the opportunities they will enjoy, and the responsibilities they must assume to achieve the American Dream for the next generation."
Freedman said he first approached Clinton about speaking at Dartmouth's commencement at a White House reception in February 1994.
"As we were going through the receiving line, you have a minute or so to talk with the President," Freedman said. "I told him how very much I wanted him to come in June 1994. President Clinton said he was working with a list of 20 and Dartmouth was on it. Unfortunately, he was unable to come because the timing was bad."
Freedman said he did not ask Reich, a former College Trustee, to intervene on behalf of the College to get Clinton to speak at Commencement.
"Last year, we used Bob very heavily," Freedman said. "This year, we did not call on Bob because I thought President Clinton knew how badly we wanted him. Whether Bob was involved or not, I just don't know."
When Eisenhower spoke at the 1953 Commencement, he delivered the now-famous speech about book-burning.
"Don't join the book burners," Eisenhower said. "Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed."
Other U.S. Presidents who have received honorary Dartmouth degrees are John Adams in 1782, James Monroe in 1817, Franklin Pierce in 1860, Woodrow Wilson in 1909, Herbert Hoover in 1920 and Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1929. But none of these men received honorary degrees when they were sitting in office as President.
Garthwaite said he was pleased with this year's honorary degree recipients.
"It's an excellent group, even with or without the President," he said. "For the faculty, it's important to recognize others' academic contributions and contributions to society."
Altman, a biology professor at Yale University, was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize in chemistry for a "fundamental biochemical discovery showing that the catalytic agent for a vital cellular reaction is a distinct, specific molecule of RNA," according to L.S. Lerner's book, "Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, 1901-1992."
Dove, currently in her second term as the seventh poet laureate of the U.S., is the first African-American and youngest person ever to hold that office, according to a profile in "Current Biography" magazine.
Dyson, a former Montgomery Fellow at the College, is a noted physicist and writer. He has made major contributions to the theory of quantum electrodynamics and authored numerous books, according to a press release.
Gray has been president and chief executive officer of the United Negro College Fund since September 1991, leading the organization to new fundraising records.
Jacobi is an internationally-recognized actor, best known to American audiences for his title role in the television series, "I, Claudius." He is a member of England's prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company and received a knighthood in 1994.
Keohane was named as the eighth, and first female, president of Duke in 1992. Previously, she had served as president of Wellesley College since 1981.
Quindlen is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times and has also served as a reporter and editor at the newspaper. She recently left the Times to devote herself to writing novels full-time.
Walcott won the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature for his poetry.
He is also a playwright and novelist, with more than 20 books to his credit.
