Candidates for Honorary Degrees

The College will recognize four distinguished leaders at the 173rd Commencement

Candidates for honorary degrees at the 173rd Commencement are journalist Juan Williams, who will deliver the Commencement address (Doctor of Journalism); the Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, dean of Washington National Cathedral (Doctor of Divinity); John A. Fry ’82, president of Franklin & Marshall College (Doctor of Humane Letters); and Nicholas Katzenbach, former attorney general of the United States (Doctor of Laws).

JOHN ANDERSON FRY, a 1982 graduate of Lafayette, has served as the 14th president of Franklin & Marshall College since July 1, 2002. During his presidency, Franklin & Marshall has improved its admissions profile, lowered the student-faculty ratio, broadened the curriculum, and transformed the student residence environment into a college house system. New academic facilities and programs include a life sciences and philosophy building; an international center housing the international studies program, study abroad office, and international students office; a writers house; a center for Jewish life; and the Franklin & Marshall College Poll.

Fry has ensured Franklin & Marshall’s long-term growth and development and spurred revitalization of northwest Lancaster through public-private partnerships. On the College’s north campus, created through the acquisition of former industrial properties, land reuse to date includes housing for 350 students, retail establishments, a turf athletic field, and a tennis center.

Fry joined Franklin & Marshall after serving seven years as executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania. He helped develop and implement the plan that guided Penn’s strategic initiatives from 1996 to 2001, including a nationally recognized neighborhood revitalization of West Philadelphia.

Faced with significant crime rates, deteriorating housing stock, and a lack of commercial amenities, Fry built a coalition of nonprofit, business, neighborhood, and governmental support for a multipronged strategy to address the key challenges facing the neighborhoods. As a result, residential property values have gone up significantly, the crime rate has been reduced by half, and hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in commercial infrastructure and economic development.

An American civilization major at Lafayette, Fry received the George Wharton Pepper Prize, awarded annually to the senior “who most nearly represents the Lafayette ideal.” He was president of Student Government, head resident adviser, and a McKelvy House Scholar. In 1986, he earned a master of business administration degree from New York University’s Stern School of Business.

During his early professional life, Fry worked closely with premier colleges and universities, first with KPMG Peat Marwick in its educational consulting practice, and then with Coopers & Lybrand’s National Higher Education Consulting Practice, where he attained the rank of partner-in-charge of the national practice. Fry is serving his second term as chair of the NCAA Division II Presidents Council. He was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary Commission and was a co-chair of the transition team for Pennsylvania Governor-Elect Edward G. Rendell.

NICHOLAS deBELLEVILLE KATZENBACH, former attorney general of the United States, has distinguished himself as a courageous leader in government service and the private sector. At the U.S. Department of Justice in the 1960s he was, President Lyndon B. Johnson said, “one of the key participants in the inner councils of all the important decisions of the presidency” for six years.

President John F. Kennedy appointed Katzenbach assistant attorney general in 1961 and then deputy attorney general in 1962. In February 1965, Johnson named Katzenbach the nation’s 65th attorney general. Katzenbach played a key role in the desegregation of the nation’s Southern universities. He was present during the 1962 riots at the University of Mississippi following the enrollment of James Meredith, the university’s first African American student. In 1963, he personally escorted James Hood and Vivian Malone, the first African American students to enroll at the University of Alabama, onto the Tuscaloosa campus.

He also played a key role in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and helped draft the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In October 1966, Katzenbach stepped down as attorney general and was named under secretary of state. He remained in that post, his last with the government, until 1969, when he joined IBM Corporation as senior vice president and general counsel. In 1986 he became a partner in the law firm of Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland & Perretti, remaining until 1994. He was chairman of MCI from 2004 to 2006.

After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1939, Katzenbach enrolled at Princeton University. In 1941, he enlisted in the Army Air Force and served until the end of the war, advancing to first lieutenant. He was a prisoner of war in Italy and Germany for two years. He was able to read so many books during his captivity that Princeton allowed him to graduate two years early, in 1945.

He earned a law degree from Yale University in 1947 and was a Rhodes Scholar from 1947 to 1949. In 1950, he entered private law practice in Trenton, N.J., and served as attorney advisor and consultant in the Office of the General Counsel to the Secretary of the Air Force, associate professor at Yale Law School, and professor of law at the University of Chicago before joining the justice department.

THE VERY REVEREND SAMUEL THAMES LLOYD III has served as the ninth dean of Washington National Cathedral since April 2005. Officially named the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, the National Cathedral serves a three-fold mission set forth in 1893 in a charter granted by Congress. It is a welcoming house of prayer for all people; the nation’s church for occasions of celebration, reflection, mourning, and crisis; and the chief mission church of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. The cathedral welcomes more than 750,000 visitors annually. It celebrated its centennial in 2007.

Lloyd previously served as rector of Trinity Church, Boston, for 12 years. His work as leader of this large urban congregation focused on preaching, teaching, and developing Christian community.

Lloyd received a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Mississippi in 1971, then served three years as a personnel officer in the Air Force, stationed at Cape Charles, Va., and in Washington, D.C. He earned a master’s degree in English literature from Georgetown University in 1975 and a doctorate in English literature from the University of Virginia in 1978.

In 1981, he received a master of divinity degree from Virginia Theological Seminary and began his ministry as an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia. At this time he also served as assistant to the rector and chaplain at St. Paul’s Memorial Church in Charlottesville. From 1984 to 1988, Lloyd was rector of the Church of St. Paul and the Redeemer in Chicago, one of the city’s most racially diverse congregations, focusing on healing and rebuilding after a period of division. As chaplain of the University of the South from 1988 to 1993, Lloyd engaged undergraduates and seminarians in the life of the chapel, re-established relationships between the chapel and the university community, and developed school-break ministries in Jamaica and New Orleans.

A frequent speaker at conferences and conventions, Lloyd has preached on radio’s The Protestant Hour program and taught courses in Christianity and literature. His writing and reviews have appeared in the Sewanee Theological Review, Forward Movement, Anglican Digest, and Journal of Religion, among other publications.

JUAN ANTONIO WILLIAMS is one of America’s leading journalists. A senior correspondent on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition program, he is a contributing political analyst for the Fox News Channel and a regular panelist on Fox News Sunday. He is also the author of six books.

Williams hosted NPR’s national call-in show Talk of the Nation from 2000 to 2001, bringing the program to cities and towns across America for monthly “town hall” meetings before live audiences.

A philosophy major at Haverford College, Williams received a bachelor of arts degree in 1976. During a 21-year career at The Washington Post, he served as an editorial writer, an op-ed columnist, and a White House reporter. He received an Emmy Award for television documentary writing and won widespread critical acclaim for a series of documentaries including Politics: The New Black Power, which debuted on PBS in 1990.

Williams is the author of the critically acclaimed biography Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, published in 1998. His bestseller Eyes on the Prize: America’s

Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 was the companion volume to a 14-hour PBS television series that premiered in 1987.

Another book, This Far by Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience, was the basis for a six-part PBS documentary that aired in 2003. In 2004, Williams became involved with the Voices of Civil Rights project, a joint effort of AARP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and the Library of Congress. He led a veteran team of reporters and editors in the production of My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience, a book presenting the eyewitness accounts of some 50 activists in the Civil Rights movement.

In 2004, he also published I’ll Find a Way or Make One: A Tribute to Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Williams’ most recent book is Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America—and What We Can Do About It. Williams is a member of the board of directors of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, Aspen Institute’s Communications and Society Program, and Washington Journalism Center.