Three receive honorary degrees
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR
Perhaps the most influential foreign correspondent since Edward R. Murrow, Cable News Network (CNN) Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour has courageously covered civil unrest and political crises throughout the world during most of the past decade. As a journalist she is noted for her indifference to her personal safety, her insight into the larger social contexts of the wars she has covered, and her insistence in bringing the world's attention to the often overlooked tragedies of our day.
Born in London in 1958, Amanpour moved with her parents to Teheran, Iran, as an infant. When the Iranian government was toppled by an Islamic revolution in January 1979, Amanpour's family fled to London.
Enrolling in the University of Rhode Island, she graduated summa cum laude while supporting herself through work in the news departments of a local radio station and a local NBC-TV affiliate. Following her graduation in 1983, she began work at CNN in Atlanta as a news assistant, the lowest job on the international news desk. She helped produce CNN's series on Iran in 1985, then became producer-correspondent in the New York bureau in 1986.
She was among the first to report on the revolution in Romania in 1989 and galvanized world attention with dispatches on the plight of Romanian children crowded into inhumane orphanages. In the summer of 1990, she reported from the Saudi-Kuwaiti border on the Persian Gulf war, afterwards covering the uprising of Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq and the civil war in the Republic of Georgia. From 1992 through 1995, Amanpour reported passionately about the violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In 1994, Amanpour won three of the most prestigious awards in journalism for her reporting from Bosnia: the George Foster Peabody Award, the George Polk Memorial Award, and the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton.
International Journalist, Global Citizen: By firm resolve and nimble intelligence, you have made the world your newsroom. Traveling light, arriving before the peacekeepers, you tell without flinching of war, famine, pestilence, death-Riders of the Apocalypse whose thundering passage convulses our age. You rivet our attention to scenes of a time in flux, communities sundered by strife both modern and ancient, stirring humanity to action by your witness. Your ports of call have marked our way toward a millennium hanging in the balance: Bucharest, Mogadishu, Sarajevo, Port-au-Prince, Kinshasa. Courageously seeking truth amid the rubble, you show us a world shrunken in many ways yet larger than unguided hands and minds can grasp.Informed by your observations, inspired by your example,we are honored in bestowing on you the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa.
J. ROGERS HOLLINGSWORTH
Distinguished for his interdisciplinary, international, and comparative scholarship, J. Rogers Hollingsworth is the author of important works on American history, economics, social work, and public policy. His studies explore the past in an effort to illuminate social and political issues that require change in the present, especially in the area of health.
Born in Anniston, Alabama, in 1932, Hollingsworth graduated from Emory College in 1954, then attended the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Emory in 1955. He received his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1960. Hollingsworth joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1964, becoming professor of history, sociology, and industrial relations. Since 1979, he has also chaired the program in comparative history.
Hollingsworth's scholarship includes works on urban and economic history, social delivery systems, the political economy of medicine in the United Kingdom and the United States, and capitalist economies. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard and Northwestern universities and has presented the James Harvey Young lecture in American history at Emory. His international appointments include visiting professorships in Germany, Japan, Nigeria, Italy, and England.
Son of Emory, Distinguished Scholar, Builder of Intellectual Bridges: Unbound by fences around the traditional disciplines, you range freely across the fields of political economy, comparative history, medical sociology, and the history of science. Your studies of institutional change have probed the complex webs that modern democracies weave to the benefit and bane of their citizens. Always you cast an eye toward the policies by which we affect the lot of the chronically ill, the fate of the impoverished, the public's boon from scientific research, and the daily life of universities themselves. Cognizant of the international reach of your lucid voice and the interdisciplinary habits of your mind, we honor the very traits that we would emulate and award you the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa.
L. BEVEL JONES III
Bishop L. Bevel Jones III has been a leader of the Methodist Church, an effective spokesman for higher education, and an active civic leader for more than fifty years. Upon his retirement as bishop in 1996, he returned to Emory University as the Loida E. Willett Churchman-in-Residence at the Candler School of Theology, one-half century after his graduation from Emory College. First elected to the Emory University Board of Trustees in 1971, Jones has served in numerous trustee capacities, including vice chair, until becoming trustee emeritus in 1996.
Born in Gracewood, Georgia, in 1926, he received his bachelor of arts degree from Emory College in 1946 and his divinity degree from the Candler School of Theology in 1949. Prior to his election as bishop in 1984, he was pastor of churches in LaGrange, Decatur, Athens, and Atlanta. His pastorates were marked by intensive community, civic, and ecumenical involvement, which he continued while serving as resident bishop for the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church in Charlotte.
An ardent advocate of higher education, Jones has served on the boards of trustees of seven United Methodist institutions, in addition to Emory. He was also a member of the Board of Trustees of The Carter Center.
Dedicated Alumnus, Devoted Churchman: During nearly a third of Emory's history, you have written a place for yourself in its pages: as student, trustee, and now teacher. Your stewardship of Emory's welfare has placed on you the burdens of duty, wisdom, and judgment, which you have exercised with charity and great good humor. Your shepherding of those in Emory's ecclesial fellowship has benefitted mutually the Church and the University, informing faith while giving haven to faithful critical inquiry. By your words and example, you have encouraged the timid and indifferent in all your sundry communities to work in behalf of the common weal. Now, as you define once more your place in your native city and your academic home, we bestow on you, with gratitude and great affection, the degree of Doctor of Divinity, honoris causa.
Photos by Kay Hinton
