Jonathan Safran Foer to Deliver 2013 Commencement Address

 

Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything is Illuminated and other international best-selling works of both fiction and nonfiction, will deliver the commencement address to the class of 2013 on May 26.

Safran Foer will also receive a Doctor of Letters degree at the ceremony. Other honorary degree recipients include Edward Burtynsky, artist and photographer, Megan Camp, vice president and program director at Shelburne Farms, Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of the Acumen Fund and Stuart Schwartz ’62, the George Burton Adams professor of history and professor of international and area studies at Yale.

Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated was the reading for the class of 2013 for their fall orientation in 2009. Members of the class read the novel during the summer and discussed its themes during orientation workshops.

President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz said he was “very happy and pleased” to host Safran Foer, a commencement speaker nominated by several students.

“We try our best to respond to students’ desires,” said Liebowitz. “I think the orientation reading resonated with many students, so this selection is quite fitting.”

International best-seller Everything is Illuminated was published in 2002 when Safran Foer was just 25 years old. The book, which chronicles the author's discovery of his family's history, was adapted into a major motion picture in 2005 starring Elijah Wood. Safran Foer has also published Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the inspiration for an Academy Award-nominated motion picture. Eating Animals is the author’s third international best-seller and a nonfiction account of his struggle with vegetarianism. In 2010, the New Yorker named Safran Foer as one of the 20 best writers under 40 years old. He teaches graduate creative writing at New York University and is working on another novel, Escape from the Children’s Hospital.

Burtynsky, who will receive a Doctor of Arts degree, has a collection of photographs of quarries and quarry work, Nature Transformed,that is currently on display at the Middlebury Museum of Art.  Burtynsky is an Ontario native whose depictions of global industrial landscape are included in the collections of more than 50 museums, including the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Canada and the Bibliotèque Nationale in Paris.

Camp will receive a Doctor of Letters degree in recognition for her 30 years of work at Shelburne Farms, a 1,400-acre working farm, nonprofit education center and National Historic Landmark located near the College. Camp’s work has helped create a process that resulted in Vermont incorporating the nation’s first education standards for sustainability. Camp is a recipient of the Outstanding Achievement Award for Environmental Education from the New England Environmental Education Association, the National Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Education Achievement Award, and the United States Environmental Protection Environmental Merit Award.

In addition, a Doctor of Humane Letters degree will be awarded to Novogratz, a pioneer in the field of impact investment. Under Novogratz, the nonprofit Acumen Fund has invested more than $80 million in social enterprises, emerging leaders and breakthrough ideas to solve the problems of poverty. Novogratz delivered the keynote speech at the launch of the College’s Center for Social Entrepreneurship in January 2012.

Schwartz will receive a Doctor of Letters degree for his work as one of the world’s leading scholars of Brazilian history. Schwartz has taught at Yale since 1996 and is the George Burton Adams professor of history and a professor of international and area studies. Schwartz’s most recent work, All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World, received numerous awards, including the 2008 Cundill International Prize in History and the 2009 American Academy of Religion Book Award.

The commencement ceremony for the class of 2013 will be held on May 26 at 10 a.m. on the Central College Lawn, located in front of Munroe and Voter Halls.