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News Release
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April 20, 2005 -- No. 194 |
Photo note: To download photos, see end of release.
Local angles: Durham,Winston-Salem; Blytheville, Ark.; Boston
Four to receive honorary degrees
at UNC’s spring commencement
By MARY CATHERINE HENDRIX
UNC News Services
CHAPEL HILL -- Four individuals who have distinguished themselves in the fields of religious scholarship, philanthropy, higher education and government will receive honorary degrees on May 15 during spring commencement at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The recipients are:
Chancellor James Moeser will preside at the commencement ceremony, to begin at 9:30 a.m. in Kenan Memorial Stadium. Gomes (pronounced "GOMES") will be the featured speaker. He will receive an honorary doctor of divinity degree; Hanes will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree; and Keohane and Panyarachun will receive honorary doctor of laws degrees. The committee on honorary degrees and special awards selected nominees for 2005 honorary degrees for approval by the Faculty Council and the Board of Trustees.
Gomes, a native of Boston, received a bachelor of arts degree from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and a bachelor of sacred theology degree from Harvard Divinity School. He was ordained to Christian ministry by The First Baptist Church of Plymouth, Mass.
Named Clergy of the Year in 1998 by Religion in American Life, Gomes participated in the presidential inaugurations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. In 1998, he presented the Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching at Yale Divinity School; in 2000, he delivered the University Sermon at Cambridge University and gave the Millennial Sermon in Canterbury Cathedral; and in 2001, he was missioner to Oxford University, preaching in the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin.
Gomes has been profiled on "60 Minutes," in The New Yorker, and by other national media outlets. Talk magazine included him in the feature article "The Best Talkers in America: Fifty Big Mouths We Hope Will Never Shut Up."
Gomes wrote national best sellers including "The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart" and "Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living." He has published seven other volumes of sermons and numerous articles and papers.
Hanes, from Winston-Salem, graduated from UNC in 1942. A longtime benefactor of the fine arts, he was the founding chairman of the Arts and Sciences Foundation, the private support arm of UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. In 2001, he established the Thomas Wolfe Scholarship in Creative Writing to bring promising young writers to the university.
Hanes funded several professorships and fellowships at UNC and has offered substantial support to UNC’s Academic Affairs Library, helping make it the first in the Southeast to reach the five millionth-volume milestone. He has been an active philanthropist to causes including the N.C. Museum of Art Foundation and the Piedmont Opera Theater.
A writer of poetry and fiction, Hanes was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and won the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction in 1961 for "The Fleet Rabble." He also won the inaugural Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry in 1953 for "Abel Anders."
The university honored Hanes in 1985 by naming an art center after him and his late wife, Barbara. In 2002, he received the North Caroliniana Society Award for extraordinary contributions to the state’s historical and cultural heritage.
Keohane, of Blytheville, Ark., graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors in political science from Wellesley College. She won a Marshall Scholarship, a distinguished, highly competitive award for graduate study, and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University. She received her doctorate in political science from Yale University.
As Duke’s eighth president (1993-2004), Keohane also taught political science at the university. She was vice president of the American Political Science Association from 1988 to 1990 and previously taught the subject at Stanford University. She has written extensively in the fields of political philosophy, feminism and education. This academic year, Keohane is a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, Calif.
Keohane sustained collaborations between Carolina and Duke and oversaw new ones. The latter include the Robertson Scholars program, in which students study at both universities; the Rotary Center for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution; and the Renaissance Computing Institute, based at UNC with support from Duke and N.C. State University.
The former president of her alma mater, Wellesley (1981-1993), Keohane was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1995 and received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1998.
Panyarachun (his name is pronounced "ah-NOND pan-YAR-ah-choon"), from Bangkok, Thailand, graduated with honors in economics and law from Cambridge University in 1955. As prime minister of Thailand (1991-1992 and 1992-1993), he led the country during a major democratic transformation. In the late 1990s, he drafted Thailand’s most democratic constitution in history.
Panyarachun is a member of the Advisory Group of Anti-Corruption Issues for the East Asia and Pacific Region of the World Bank, the Group of International Advisors of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Advisory Council of Transparency International, a nonprofit organization that seeks to curb corruption in international affairs.
He also has been UNICEF Ambassador for Thailand since 1996. In 2001, Panyarachun was elected chairman of the National Economic and Social Advisory Council. U.N. Secretary general Kofi Annan recently named him chairman of a commission to recommend steps for assuring effective collective responses to challenges to international peace and security.
Panyarachun’s leadership with the Kenan Institute Asia helped the nonprofit foundation, affiliated with UNC, to become a self-supporting Thai institute. The institute works to build partnerships among Asian and American organizations in areas such as education, public health, environmental management and better business practices.
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For more information on spring commencement, click on www.unc.edu/commencement.
(Hendrix, of Durham, is a UNC senior double-majoring in psychology and journalism and mass communication.)
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