President of Israel's Supreme Court to give address at Brandeis University's 52nd commencement

Released on April 08, 2003
Contact: Dennis Nealon 781-736-4205 or nealon@brandeis.edu

Aharon Barak, the president of Israel's Supreme Court, will deliver the keynote address at Brandeis's 52nd commencement on Sunday, May 18. He also will receive an honorary degree together with six others, including former Dartmouth College President James O. Freedman; noted diplomat Richard Holbrooke; prominent sociologist and author Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot; internationally esteemed historian and John Adams author David McCullough; U.S. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi; and philanthropist Alan B. Slifka, co-founder of the New York-based Abraham Fund.

Born in Lithuania in 1936, Barak became president of the Supreme Court in 1995 after a long career in academia and law. He rose through the ranks of Israel's jurisprudence system from attorney general to justice of the Supreme Court, to deputy president and, finally, president of that body.

Barak, a Ph.D., studied law, economics and international relations at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. From 1970-'72 he lectured at New York University School of Law, and was appointed professor at the Hebrew University's School of Law in 1972. In 1973 he received the Kaplan Prize for excellence in science and research. Two years later he received the Israel Prize in legal studies and is a member of the Israeli Academy of Sciences.

Freedman is a Brandeis trustee. He is a former president of the University of Iowa and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. After serving as law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, he practiced law with the New York City law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison before joining the University of Pennsylvania Law School faculty in 1964. He became dean of the law school in 1979. In 1982, he was appointed president of the University of Iowa. He served as president of Dartmouth College from 1987 to 1998 and of the University of Iowa from 1982 to 1987.

In 1991, Freedman received the William O. Douglas First Amendment Freedom Award from the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, and in 1996 the Frederic W. Ness Book Award of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. He is the author of Crisis and Legitimacy: The Administrative Process and American Government, published by Cambridge University Press in 1978; and Idealism and Liberal Education, published by the University of Michigan Press in 1996.

His most recent book is Liberal Education and the Public Interest, published by the University of Iowa Press in January 2003.

Holbrooke is the former Permanent United States Representative to the United Nations, a position to which the Senate confirmed him in 1999. During his career he has been a professional diplomat, a magazine editor, an author, a Peace Corps director, the chairman of two important non-governmental organizations and an investment banker.

He was the U.S. ambassador to Germany from 1993-1994 before being appointed by President Clinton as assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs in 1994. During that time, he was also chief negotiator for the historic 1995 Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia.

His most recent position was as a vice chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston, a New York-based investment bank, from 1996-1999.

Lawrence-Lightfoot is the Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A sociologist by training, she examines the culture of schools, the patterns and structures of classroom life, socialization within families and communities, and the relationships between culture and learning styles. She has pioneered portraiture, an approach to social science methodology that bridges the realms of aesthetics and empiricism.

She is the author of several books, including I've Known Rivers: Lives of Loss and Liberation, which explores the development of creativity and wisdom using the lens of "human archaeology," and The Art and Science of Portraiture, which documents her pioneering approach to social science methodology. Among her other works are The Good High School: Portraits of Character and Culture, Beyond Bias and Worlds Apart: Relationships Between Families and Schools.

In 1984, she was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Prize Fellowship, and in 1993, she received Harvard's George Ledlie prize for research that makes the "most valuable contribution to science" and "the benefit of mankind."

McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner, is also known as the narrator for documentaries including The Civil War and Napoleon. His books include The Johnstown Flood, The Great Bridge, The Path Between the Seas, Mornings on Horseback, Brave Companions, Truman, and John Adams - none of which has ever been out of print.

He has been an editor, essayist, teacher, lecturer, and television host of PBS's Smithsonian World and The American Experience. He is a past president of the Society of American Historians, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received 31 honorary degrees.

Pelosi is the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. Congress and first woman in the nation to lead a major political party. She came to the Leader's role after 15 years in the House, representing California's 8th Congressional District, which includes most of the City of San Francisco. Before being elected leader, she served as House Democratic Whip for one year, where she was responsible for the party's legislative strategy in the House and for keeping members informed about upcoming issues and votes.

A major philanthropist, Slifka also co-founded the Abraham Fund, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting coexistence between Israel's Jewish and Arab citizens. He is also a Brandeis Fellow. With his mother, Sylvia, he made possible the Joseph Slifka Coexistence Endowment Fund at Brandeis. That fund supports Jewish and Arab Israeli undergraduates at Brandeis. A prominent Wall Street investor, he has also provided generous support to the coexistence initiatives of the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life at Brandeis. The Alan B. Slifka Program in International Coexistence is supported by a grant from the Alan B. Slifka Foundation.

Links

Names, The Boston Globe

submitted by Dennis Nealon