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Candidates for honorary degrees at the 172nd Commencement are historian Michael Beschloss, who will deliver the Commencement address (Doctor of Letters); the Rev. Peter J. Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard University and Pusey Minister in Harvard’s Memorial Church, who will give the Baccalaureate sermon (Doctor of Divinity); Michael H. Moskow ’59, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (Doctor of Public Service), Easton-based documentary filmmaker Lou Reda (Doctor of Arts), and artist and author Faith Ringgold (Doctor of Fine Arts).
MICHAEL R. BESCHLOSS, an award-winning historian, is the author of nine books and a regular commentator about the U.S. Presidency on PBS television’s The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and NBC News programs.
Beschloss’ newest book discusses major controversial decisions by American presidents and how they shaped history. Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989 was released in early May by Simon & Schuster. Beschloss outlines how several occupants of the White House—including George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan—combined courage with wisdom to change the future of the country, despite the criticism they received.
Beschloss is also the author of the acclaimed TheNew York Times best-seller The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941-1945, published by Simon & Schuster, which Amazon.com declared the best-selling history book in America in 2002.
He serves as the Presidential historian for NBC News and appears regularly on Meet the Press, Today, and other NBC network programs. In 2005 he was awarded an Emmy for his role in creating the three-part Discovery Channel series Decisions that Shook the World, which focused on Lyndon B. Johnson, Reagan, and Roosevelt. Newsweek has called him “the nation’s leading presidential historian.”
Born in Chicago, Beschloss earned a B.A. at Williams College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He was a historian on the staff of the Smithsonian Institution 1982-86, senior associate member at Oxford University, England, 1986-87, and senior fellow of the Annenberg Foundation, Washington, D.C., 1988-96.
Taking Charge (Simon & Schuster, 1997) was the first volume of Beschloss’ highly praised trilogy on President Johnson’s secret tapes. TheWall Street Journal called it “sheer marvelous history,” TheNew York Times editorial page, “an important event.” The second volume, Reaching for Glory (Simon & Schuster, 2001), was called “an incomparable portrait of a President at work” by The New York Times Book Review. Both books were national best-sellers.
Beschloss’ first book, Kennedy and Roosevelt: The Uneasy Alliance (Norton, 1980), started as his senior honors thesis at Williams College. Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair (Harper, 1986), was called “a grand narrative . . . crowded with well-drawn portraits” by The New Yorker. The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-1963 (HarperCollins, 1991), won the Ambassador Book Prize and was called by TheNew Yorker the “definitive” history of Kennedy and the Cold War.
He also co-authored two books with Strobe Talbott, former Deputy Secretary in the U.S. State Department: At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (Little, Brown, 1993) and Sudden Victory: Bush, Gorbachev and the End of the Cold War (HarperCollins, 1992).
Beschloss is the recipient of the Order of Lincoln from the Lincoln Academy of Illinois and Harry S. Truman Public Service Award from the City of Independence, Mo. He is a trustee of the White House Historical Association, National Archives Foundation, Thomas Jefferson Foundation (Monticello), and the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, and is a member of the board of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.
THE REVEREND PROFESSOR PETER J. GOMES, an accomplished and distinguished theologian, is thePlummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister of Memorial Church at Harvard University.
An American Baptist minister, Gomes was named Clergy of the Year in 1998 by Religion in American Life. He is the author of The New York Times best-selling books The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart (1996) and Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living (1998), published by William Morrow and Company, Inc. He also wrote The Good Life: Truths That Last in Times of Need (2002) and Strength for the Journey: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living (2003), which were both published by HarperSanFrancisco, and The Backward Glance and the Forward Look (2005), published by WordTech. Gomes has also authored 10 volumes of sermons and numerous articles and papers.
A member of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Faculty of Divinity, Gomes earned an A.B. from Bates College and an S.T.B. from Harvard Divinity School. He has received honorary degrees from more than 30 colleges and universities and is an Honorary Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, where the Gomes Lectureship is established in his name.
Born in Boston, he was ordained to the Christian ministry by the First Baptist Church of Plymouth, Mass. He has served in the Memorial Church at Harvard since 1970 and as Plummer Professor and Pusey Minister since 1974.
Gomes participated in the Presidential inaugurations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He serves on the advisory board of The Living Pulpit and is active as a speaker and preacher in America and Britain. In 2005 he presented a series of sermons in St. Edmundsbury Cathedral, England, and in 2003 gave the Lyttleton Addresses at Eton College, England. He served as Hein Fry Lecturer for the Evangelical Lutheran Seminaries in the United States in 2002. Gomes was the Missioner to Oxford University in 2001 and in 2000 he delivered the University Sermon before the University of Cambridge, England, and the Millennial Sermon in Canterbury Cathedral, England. He gave the Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching at Yale Divinity School in 1998.
He received the Preston N. Williams Award from Harvard Divinity School in 2006 and the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award from Harvard University in 2001.
Gomes is Harvard University trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, a trustee of Roxbury Latin School and Bates College, and a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society and Colonial Society of Massachusetts. He is former acting director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research; past president of the Signet Society, Harvard’s oldest literary society; past president and trustee of the Pilgrim Society of Plymouth, Mass.; and former trustee of Wellesley College, the Public Broadcasting Service, and Plimoth Plantation.
MICHAEL H. MOSKOW ’59 has been the eighth president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago since 1994 and a member of the Lafayette Board of Trustees since 1996. He serves on the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee, bringing his district’s perspective to policy discussions in Washington. During the course of his career, he has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate for five government positions.
Born in Paterson, N.J., Moskow earned an A.B. in economics from Lafayette and a Ph.D. in business and applied economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He began his career teaching economics, labor relations, and management at Temple University, Lafayette, and Drexel University. From 1969 to 1977, he held a number of senior positions with the U.S. government, including Undersecretary of Labor at the U.S. Department of Labor, director of the Council on Wage and Price Stability, Assistant Secretary for policy development and research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and senior staff economist with the Council of Economic Advisers.
Moskow joined the private sector in 1977 with Esmark, Inc., in Chicago, and later held senior management positions at Northwest Industries, Dart and Kraft, Inc., and Premark International, Inc., a spin-off from Dart and Kraft.
In 1991, President George Bush appointed him Deputy United States Trade Representative, with the rank of Ambassador. He was responsible for trade negotiations with Japan, China, and Southeast Asian countries as well as industries such as steel, semiconductors, and aircraft. In 1993 he joined the faculty of J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, where he was professor of strategy and international management at the time of his appointment to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
Moskow is active in numerous professional and civic organizations. He is vice chairman of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and former chairman of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Economic Club of Chicago. He also serves as a director of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, Northwestern Memorial Foundation, World Business Chicago, and Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. He is a member of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, and a member of the Governing Board of the Illinois Council on Economic Education.
In addition to his trustee duties at Lafayette, he serves on the advisory board to the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the visiting committee of the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago.
LOUIS J. REDA is internationally recognized as one of the country’s outstanding documentary filmmakers. He is executive producer of Lou Reda Productions of Easton, Pa., with his son, Scott L. Reda. The company, which regularly produces programs of the highest quality for cable and network television, is best known for documentaries exploring events that have shaped the modern world and for its biographies.
In the 30 years since its founding, the company has produced more than 500 cable and network programs as well as numerous shorts and special presentations for networks such as the History Channel, A&E Television Network, Discovery Times Channel, Biography Channel, History International, Military History Channel, and Military Channel, and organizations such as the Smithsonian Institution. Reda Productions has received numerous awards including five Emmy nominations, five CINE Golden Eagle Awards, two Telly Awards, a George Foster Peabody Award, People’s Choice Award, Golden Boot Award, and Department of Defense Award.
Among the company’s award-winning programs are Eyewitness In Iraq; The Last Day of WW I: 11th Month, 11th Day, 11th Hour; When Cowboys Were King; The Day the Towers Fell; The Rape of Nanking; Japanese War Crimes and Trials; The Blue and The Gray; and John Hammond: From Bessie Smith to Bruce Springsteen. His company has produced more than 20 biographies of such notable figures as George Patton, Norman Rockwell, Milton Hershey, Neil Young, Bob Marley, Dwight Eisenhower, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, and Douglas MacArthur. He has also produced 80 military history programs, including the 13-part series America at War. The company has produced 35 books for most of the major New York publishing houses.
Airing this month on the History Channel are the Lou Reda Productions Vietnam: Homecoming, documenting a Vietnam veterans’ reunion; Hippies, tracing the counterculture movement of the 1960s and its impact today; Night of Long Knives about Adolf Hitler’s rise to power; and Battle History of the U.S. Navy: Born into War, a history of the U.S. Navy.
Reda has worked with some of the country’s most notable historians, including Bruce Catton, Henry Steele Commager, Stephen Ambrose, David Brinkley, and Lafayette’s own Donald Miller, MacCracken Professor of History. He has hosted Lafayette interns at his company, sharing his knowledge and providing an inside look at the work involved in making documentaries.
Raised in Phillipsburg, N.J., Reda began his career in the entertainment industry as a teen, singing and playing guitar. During World War II, he served in the Marshall Islands and the Philippines (1943-46) with the U.S. Navy’s 100th Battalion, Seabees. After the war he began working for a New York talent agency, booking bands and entertainers such as Chubby Checker and The Amazing Kreskin, a magician/mind reader. In the 1960s he started Lou Reda Furniture in Easton.
He produced one of television’s earliest miniseries, an eight-hour CBS miniseries on the Civil War, The Blue and The Gray. Today his company offers a complete range of technical and creative production services and holds a vast archive of historical film footage, which is one of the largest privately owned film archives in the United States.
FAITH RINGGOLD, an acclaimed artist and author, began her artistic career more than 40 years ago as a painter. Today she is best known for her painted story quilts—art that combines printing, quilted fabric, and storytelling. She is professor emerita at the University of California at San Diego, where she taught for 18 years until her retirement in 2002. She has also served as an artist-in-residence at Lafayette’s Experimental Printmaking Institute.
Ringgold’s art has been exhibited in major museums in the U.S., Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Her work is in the permanent collection of many museums, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Boston Museum of Fine Art, Williams College, Baltimore Museum, and others.
Her first book, Tar Beach, a book for “children of all ages,” was published by Random House in 1991 and won more than 30 awards, including a Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Award for illustration. The book is based on her story quilt “Tar Beach,” from “The Woman on a Bridge Series of 1988” which is in the permanent collection of the Guggenheim Museum. She has written and illustrated 14 children’s books including If a Bus Could Talk: The Story of Rosa Parks, Cassie’s Colorful Day, Counting to Tar Beach, Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad in the Sky, Dinner at Aunt Connie’s House, The Invisible Princess, Talking to Faith Ringgold, My Dream of Martin Luther King, O Holy Night, The Three Witches, and Bonjour, Lonnie. Ringgold’s first adult book, We Flew Over the Bridge: The Memoirs of Faith Ringgold, was published by Little, Brown in 1995 and was re-released by Duke University Press in paperback in 2005.
A native of Harlem, Ringgold studied art at City College in New York, receiving a B.S. in fine art and education in 1955 and an M.A. in art in 1959. She began her career as a teacher in the New York City public schools, teaching for 18 years before resigning in 1973 to devote herself fulltime to creating art. She began making quilts in collaboration with her mother, Willi Posey, in 1980.
Ringgold has received more than 75 awards, fellowships, citations, and honors, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Fellowship for painting, two National Endowment for the Arts Awards for sculpture and painting, the La Napoule Foundation Award for painting in France, and 18 honorary doctorates.
She has a close relationship with Lafayette’s Experimental Printmaking Institute. Curlee Holton, professor and head of art and founding director of the Experimental Printmaking Institute, is the author of Faith Ringgold: A View from the Studio (2005), which was published in conjunction with Ringgold’s exhibition at the Allentown Art Museum. Holton and Ringgold have worked together on several projects since 1993. She continues her career at studios in Englewood, N.J., and New York City.