Six individuals will receive honorary degrees during commencement exercises in May, the University announced Monday.
The group includes businessman and philanthropist James Barksdale; former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary Nancy Brinker; musician Emmylou Harris; wrongful convictions activist Darryl Hunt; award-winning physicist Robert Richardson, Physics ’66; and renowned journalist and author Fareed Zakaria, the 2012 commencement speaker.
“This is a wonderful opportunity for Duke to honor these remarkable individuals,” President Richard Brodhead said in a news release Monday. “As our graduates begin to imagine how they can put their education to use in the world, they will be inspired by the stories of how these extraordinary men and women developed their particular talents and gifts in service to society.”
Barksdale, president and chairman of the philanthropic investment company Barksdale Management Corp., is the former chief operating officer of Federal Express, former CEO of AT&T Wireless Services and former president and CEO of Netscape Communications Corp. Brinker is the founder and CEO of Susan G. Komen for the Cure in honor of her sister. The foundation has invested nearly $2 billion in breast cancer research and community health internationally. She served as ambassador to Hungary from 2001 to 2003 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
Harris, the winner of 12 Grammy Awards, has collaborated with artists including Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt, John Denver, The Band, Elvis Costello and Dolly Parton. Hunt spent 19 years in prison following a wrongful conviction for rape and murder in 1984. Following his exoneration in 2004, Hunt served as an advocate for the wrongfully convicted through the Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice, which helps exonerated inmates adjust to life outside prison.
Richardson, the Floyd Newman professor of physics at Cornell University, won the 1996 Nobel Prize for Physics. He also served on the Duke Board of Trustees from 1997 to 2007.
Zakaria, host of CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” also works as an editor-at-large at Time magazine and a columnist at the Washington Post. He was featured in Foreign Policy magazine’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers” and Newsweek’s “Power 50” ranking of the most powerful political figures of 2010. Zakaria was announced as the 2012 commencement speaker in November.
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