Dartmouth will award honorary degrees to seven individuals at Commencement on June 13, according to a College press release. The recipients include U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health of Rwanda Agnes Binagwaho, Chairman of the Irving Oil Company Arthur Irving and former Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations Stephen Lewis. Lewis, who will receive an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, will give the main Commencement address, according to the press release. Lewis is the co-director of AIDS-Free World, an organization which calls for international efforts to combat HIV/AIDS. Other honorary degree recipients include president and CEO of the MacLean-Fogg Company Barry MacLean '60 Th'61, award-winning photojournalist James Nachtwey '70 and best-selling novelist and Hanover resident Jodi Picoult.
DeVon Mosley '09 and Mahmud Johnson '13 have each been awarded $10,000 Kathryn Wasserman Davis Project for Peace grants, which provide funding for initiatives that support peace, according to a College press release. Mosley and Johnson will work over the summer to complete their individual projects, the press release said. Mosley's Desoto Peace Project will offer time and stress management workshops, sports clinics and music lessons in Desoto, Texas, to encourage adolescents to stay in school and discourage gang involvement. Johnson's iMHere! program, which is based in his hometown of Monrovia, Liberia, aims to help boys stay in school through educational and recreational programs. Over the past three years, five other Dartmouth students have also received Projects for Peace grants.
Despite criticism from several independent organizations, administrators at the University of California, Berkeley's College of Letters and Science are going ahead with a plan to request that incoming freshmen and transfer students supply DNA samples, Inside Higher Ed reported Friday. The samples would be tested for three genes involved in the metabolism of food and drinks, and participation would be both optional and anonymous, Inside Higher Ed wrote. Following the tests, participating students would have access to information that would allow them to tailor their diets and alcohol consumption to be more appropriate with their genetic dispositions. According to the Council for Responsible Genetics, however, the tests could be "used out of context" in a way detrimental to the subjects' interests. The Center for Genetics and Society, a Berkeley-based nonprofit organization, also expressed its disapproval of the plan to University administrators, Inside Higher Ed wrote. Because the plan was intended to generate national dialogue, the media attention has not deterred the plan, Alix Schwartz, the University's director of academic planning, told Inside Higher Ed.
