Pulitzer
Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin to
give Barnard College 108th Commencement
address
Goodwin,
Hanna Holborn Gray, Annie Leibovitz, and Kathie
Olsen to receive Barnard Medal of Distinction
May
2, 2000, NEW YORK, NY – Historian Doris Kearns
Goodwin, winner of the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for history
for her book No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt: The Home Front During World War II, will
address Barnard College’s class of 2000 at the 108th
Commencement at 2:30 PM on Tuesday, May 16, on Lehman
Lawn at Barnard College (rain location: Levien Gymnasium,
Columbia University.)
Goodwin
will receive the Barnard Medal of Distinction along
with: Hanna Holborn Gray, former president of the
University of Chicago and winner of the Presidential
Medal of Freedom; Annie Leibovitz, distinguished
celebrity photographer known for her brave and distinctive
style; and Kathie Olsen, chief scientist at NASA,
renowned for her research in neuroendocrinology
as well as her work at the National Science Foundation.
Doris
Kearns Goodwin
Doris
Kearns Goodwin, one of the country’s most celebrated
biographers, has won acclaim as an author, faculty
member, and media commentator. Goodwin graduated
magna cum laude from Colby College in 1964,
was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 1966, and
earned her doctorate in 1968 from Harvard University.
During graduate school, she was selected as a White
House Fellow and spent her time there working on
problems of ghetto unemployment. Later, she became
staff assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson until
he left office. She taught government at Harvard
University for 10 years, including a course on the
American Presidency. She is now a member of the
board of overseers of Harvard University. Author
of several successful books, Goodwin is also a regular
contributor to PBS' The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,
a regular panelist on Five on Five in Boston,
a political analyst for Nightline, and she
has appeared on numerous other NBC news programs.
Based
on her experience with Johnson, Goodwin wrote her
first book, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream,
a Book-of-the-Month Club bestseller in 1976, which
The New York Times called "the most
penetrating political biography ever written." Her
second book, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,
was published in 1987. ABC bought the rights and
transformed the book into a six-hour miniseries,
which aired in February 1990.
Goodwin
won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for history for her
book No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt:
The Home Front During World War II. The book
also won the Harold Washington Library Award, the
New England Bookseller Association Award, the Ambassador
Book Award and the Washington Monthly Book Award.
It was a New York Times bestseller for six
months. The Times noted that "Goodwin
has pulled off the double trick of making Franklin
and Eleanor Roosevelt seem so monumental as to have
come from a very distant past, and at the same time
so vital as to have been alive only yesterday."
Goodwin
is also an expert on baseball, and her most recent
book, Wait Till Next Year, was another New
York Times best seller. It documents her life
as a Dodgers fan in Brooklyn in the 1950s. She has
written numerous articles on baseball for leading
national publications and was the first woman journalist
to enter the Red Sox locker room.
She
is married to former presidential aide and writer
Richard Goodwin, and is the mother of three sons.
Hanna
Holborn Gray
Hanna
Holborn Gray has provided strong and inspired leadership
to some of our nation’s finest colleges and universities.
Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991,
she is esteemed for her exceptional contributions
to higher education and to civic life.
Born
in Germany in 1930, Gray immigrated to the United
States in 1934. She received a doctorate in Renaissance
history from Harvard in 1957; as a professor at
Northwestern, she became the dean of arts and sciences
for the school. Gray was the first woman provost
at Yale University from 1974-78 and became the first
woman to head a major research university in 1978
when she served as president of the University of
Chicago for 15 years. In the 1980s she reviewed
the graduate education programs, and the ensuing
changes strengthened both graduate and professional
programs. She also sought ways to make the campus
more appealing to undergraduate students who might
have felt overwhelmed by the larger university scene.
She succeeded, and undergraduate enrollment grew
by nearly one-third during her presidency.
As
the first female president of the University of
Chicago, she broke barriers that led to the overall
professional advancement of women. She retired as
president in 1993 and has since returned to teaching
undergraduates at the University of Chicago.
Annie
Leibovitz
Annie
Leibovitz is an American photographer best known
for her portraits of celebrities. Born in Westport,
Connecticut, in 1949, she received a bachelor of
fine arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute
in 1971. From 1970 to 1983 she was a freelance photographer
and the chief photographer for RollingStone.
She was also the concert-tour photographer for the
Rolling Stones in 1975. She has close connections
to Vanity Fair, and in the early 1990s, she
founded the Annie Leibovitz Studio in New York City.
Leibovitz’s
portraits are striking and even outrageous, but
her style is unique and achieved with a flair that
sets her apart from other portrait artists. She
has published three books. The latest, Annie
Leibovitz: Women, presented the biggest
challenge to her because of the scope of the topic.
The book, however, presents a stunning picture of
women in American society.
In
1991, the National Portrait Gallery (Washington,
D.C.) honored Leibovitz with a retrospective exhibition,
which toured the United States, Europe, and Asia.
Her awards include the American Society of Magazine
Photographers (ASMP) Photographer of the Year Award
(1983); the ASMP Innovation in Photography Award
(1987); the Clio Award and the Campaign of the Decade
Award from Advertising Age (1987); and the
Infinity Award for applied photography from the
International Center for Photography (1990).
Kathie
Olsen
Kathie
Olsen graduated with honors from Chatham College
and received her Ph.D. in Biology from the University
of California. She was also a postdoctoral fellow
at Harvard Medical School from 1979-80. Olsen is
a chief scientist at NASA and has developed a distinguished
career as both a neuroscientist (working in behavioral
neuroendocrinology) and as science administrator
at the National Science Foundation (NSF). She founded
the NSF’s program for behavioral neuroendocrinology
and doubled funding during a six-year period. Olsen
also serves as the administrator’s senior scientific
advisor and principal interface with the national
and international scientific community.
Olsen
has received several honors and awards from numerous
scientific societies as well as the NSF. She was
honored by the International Behavioral Neuroscience
Society, as well as by the Society for Behavioral
Neuroendocrinology in 1998 for her contributions
to the field of neuroscience. She received the Director’s
Superior Accomplishment Award (1995), the Director’s
Award of Excellence (1994), as well as many others
from the National Science Foundation. She has edited
and contributed to several books and served on federal
scientific review panels.
Barnard
College, founded in 1889, is a highly selective,
independent college for women affiliated with Columbia
University and located in New York City. Barnard
has a long-standing tradition of graduating women
who become leaders in business, medicine, government,
science, education, public service, and the arts.
Contact:
Lucas Held, Office of Public Affairs, 212-854-7583
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