News and Information
Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30322

Release date: April 26, 1999
Contact: Deb Hammacher, Assistant Director

EMORY UNIVERSITY TO GRANT HONORARY DEGREES AT MAY 10 COMMENCEMENT

A Nobel Peace Prize winner, a retired Methodist bishop, an Emory alumnus now Korean university president, and a retired railroad executive and arts advocate will receive honorary doctoral degrees at Emory University's 154th commencement on Monday, May 10. Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, the commencement speaker, also will receive an honorary doctoral degree.

Emory President William M. Chace will present the degrees to Norman Borlaug, Leontine Kelly, Wan-Sang Han, Charles R. Yates and Reich.

o Norman E. Borlaug, who will receive a doctor of science degree, is an agronomist and the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize recipient for his role in the "green revolution" of agriculture in Pakistan and India. Since 1985 he has chaired the Sasakawa Africa Association and worked tirelessly with The Carter Center's Global 2000 program to increase agriculture yields in Africa. Through his work he has promoted higher-yield agricultural techniques that have resulted in two- to five-fold increases; has spearheaded the introduction of high protein maize in Ghana; and has advised governments on policy changes that would enhance agricultural production and availability. As a result of his efforts, Ethiopian farmers now grow enough food to feed their country and to export to others.

"Dr. Borlaug exemplifies a principle that Emory endeavors to instill in its students, namely, service to humanity," says former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who nominated Borlaug for his honorary degree.

Borlaug and his wife have lived abroad for most of the last five decades, but maintain offices in College Station, Texas, and Mexico City.

o Leontine Kelly of San Mateo, Calif. (94401), who will receive a doctor of divinity degree, taught public school for many years before entering the ministry. The first African-American woman elected to the episcopacy of the United Methodist Church, she began a path through the ranks of church administration when she was ordained deacon by the late Emory trustee emeritus Bishop William Cannon in 1972. Kelly received her master's of divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in 1976 and served churches in the Virginia Annual Conference until 1984, when she was invited to stand for election outside her own district in the church's Western Jurisdiction. She served there as bishop of the San Francisco area until her 1992 retirement.

o Wan-Sang Han of Seoul, Korea, who will receive a doctor of letters degree, received his doctoral degree in sociology from Emory in 1967 and spent two years teaching at East Carolina University before returning to Korea to teach at Seoul National University. There Han increasingly shifted his focus to activism on behalf of democratic change at great personal and professional risk, even spending time in prison. After the political climate changed, he was elected president of the Korean Sociological Society in 1990 and served in 1993 as a cabinet member in one of the country's first democratic governments. He currently is president of the Korean University of the Air, a venture concerned with applying technology to distance learning in higher education.

o Robert Reich of Waltham, Mass. (02254), who will receive a doctor of laws degree, is the former U.S. Secretary of Labor and current University Professor and Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis University. He has distinguished himself as a strong proponent for American workers in his public and private careers. During his tenure in the first Clinton administration, the Department of Labor cracked down on unsafe working conditions, sought to abolish sweatshops in the United States and child labor throughout the world, advocated the successful passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act, and was instrumental in raising the minimum wage for the first time since 1989.

o Charles R. Yates of Atlanta (30327), who will receive a doctor of humane letters degree, is a native Atlantan who retired from his long career as a vice president for Atlantic Coast Line and Louisville & Nashville Railroads in 1973. It was then that he took up a second career as a volunteer, becoming president of the Atlanta Arts Alliance, which eventually became the Woodruff Arts Center. A friend of the late Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) conductor and choral leader Robert Shaw since 1938, he was a member of the committee that recruited Shaw for the ASO.

An accomplished amateur golfer, Yates followed in the footsteps of his mentor Bobby Jones by winning the 1938 British Amateur. Yates is a former secretary of The Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Ga., and chairs the Emory Committee for the Robert T. Jones Scholarship, which provides for four students each from Emory and its sister institution, The University of St. Andrews in Scotland, to spend a year at each other's school.