On gratitude

Recipients of honorary degrees

Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, who has “transformed our global village, revolutionized the flow of knowledge, and changed the way we live”: Doctor of Engineering and Technology.

Rita Dove, poet, author, and the youngest US poet laureate, whose poems capture “a nation’s history and our inner lives with astute clarity”: Doctor of Letters.

Ramachandra Guha, “an incisive essayist of [his] country’s vibrant and clamorous politics and society, a renowned historian of modern India, and the definitive biographer of Gandhi”: Doctor of Humanities.

Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize–winning psychologist, whose “pathbreaking work has given psychologists and economists new tools with which to explore human behavior and cognition”: Doctor of Social Science.

Elliot M. Meyerowitz ’77PhD, biologist, whose innovations in plant science have attracted “a new generation of scholars to the analysis of how things grow, helping to feed the world”: Doctor of Science.

Joseph W. Polisi ’80MusAD, president of the Juilliard School, “instrumental in creating community outreach programs, bringing the arts to children in city schools, and working for curriculum reform to embrace the arts”: Doctor of Music.

Michael H. Posner, founding director of what is now Human Rights First, who “built an organization that has led the world in providing legal representation to refugees seeking asylum,… advocated for the rights of workers in foreign factories, and called for an end to coercive interrogation by our country”: Doctor of Law.

Anna Deavere Smith, actor, playwright, and documentarian, who set out “to understand and reveal ‘the American character’ through an exploration of race, class, gender, social justice, and spirituality in this country”: Doctor of Fine Arts.

Ralph Stanley, American bluegrass artist, “the patriarch of traditional mountain and bluegrass music”: Doctor of Music.

David F. Swensen ’80PhD, chief investment officer of Yale, whose “unconventional success has allowed Yale to grow and prosper” and who has “trained and mentored a new generation of investment managers for institutions of higher education across the country”: Doctor of Humane Letters.

Ahmed H. Zewail, Nobel Prize–winning chemist who “pulled back the curtain on chemical reactions, using lasers to capture them in the tiniest fragment of time,” so scientists can observe how “atoms and molecules interact to create new compounds”: Doctor of Science.

Huda Y. Zoghbi, pediatric neurologist, who “discovered the cause of Rett syndrome, a rare and severe form of autism, and of a disorder that results in degeneration of the cerebellum” and whose “work has helped explain brain development and function”: Doctor of Medical Sciences.

Recipients of teaching prizes

Jean-Christophe Agnew, professor of American studies and history: Yale College–Sidonie Miskimin Clauss Prize for Excellence in the Humanities.

Joseph Chang, professor of statistics: Lex Hixon ’63 Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Social Sciences.

Paul Grimstad, assistant professor of English: Sarai Ribicoff ’79 Prize.

Alfred Guy, R. W. B. Lewis Director, Yale College Writing Center: Richard H. Brodhead ’68 Teaching Prize for Teaching Excellence by Non-Ladder Faculty.

Asaf Hadari, Gibbs Assistant Professor of Mathematics: Dylan Hixon ’88 Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Natural Sciences.

Margaret Homans ’74, ’78PhD, professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and English: Harwood F. Byrnes/Richard B. Sewall Teaching Prize.