On April 25, the College announced in an email to campus that it will award seven honorary degrees at the Class of 2025 commencement ceremony on June 15. The honorary degrees include two Doctors of Arts, three Doctors of Humane Letters, one Doctor of Laws and one Doctor of Sciences to individuals who have made significant contributions to athletics, the arts, public policy and the sciences.
Commencement speaker Sandra Oh will receive an honorary Doctor of Arts degree. Producer David Benioff ’92, who co-created the television show Game of Thrones, will receive the other Doctor of Arts degree. Benioff also co-created the television adaptation of the novel “The Three-Body Problem.”
Former Olympic rower Judy Geer ’75 Th ’83, Baptist minister and former baseball player William Greason and world-champion alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin will receive honorary Doctors of Humane Letters degrees.
Geer competed in the 1976 and 1984 Summer Olympics and owns the Craftsbury Outdoor Center in Craftsbury, V.t. Greason played for the Birmingham Black Barons and St. Louis Cardinals and was the first Black professional baseball player in Oklahoma as a player for the minor league Oklahoma City Indians. At 100 years old, he is the oldest living player in Major League Baseball. Shiffrin has the most World Cup wins of any alpine skier in history and is a two-time Olympic gold medalist. She has a connection to Dartmouth through her father, Jeff Shiffrin ’76.
The College will also award an honorary Doctor of Laws degree to former Department of the Interior senior counselor Lynn Trujillo ’94. Trujillo, an enrolled member of Sandia Pueblo and part of Acoma and Taos Pueblos, established New Mexico’s first Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives task force during her time leading the New Mexico Department of Indian Affairs.
Former Surgeon General Antonia Novello, the first woman and Hispanic individual to occupy the role, will receive an honorary Doctor of Sciences degree. During her tenure from 1990 to 1993, Novello focused on the AIDS epidemic, health issues of women, children and minorities and underage drinking and smoking.
Kelsey Wang is a reporter and editor for The Dartmouth from the greater Seattle area, majoring in history and government. Outside of The D, she likes to crochet, do jigsaw puzzles and paint.
