Contact: Sarah Ray

802-443-5794

sray@middlebury.edu

Posted: April 15,

2003

MIDDLEBURY,

VT
- Governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson will

deliver the commencement address at Middlebury College’s graduation

ceremony on Sunday, May 25. He will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws

degree. The College will award honorary degrees to six other distinguished

individuals as well.

Bill Richardson was elected governor of New Mexico in November 2002. From 1983

to 1997, he represented northern New Mexico, one of the nation’s

most diverse congressional districts, in the United States House of Representatives.

During his years as a congressman, Richardson concentrated on environmental,

energy and international issues, and served as a special envoy on several

sensitive missions to North Korea, Iraq and Cuba. He also served in President

Clinton’s Cabinet for four years, from 1997 to 1998 as U.S. ambassador

to the United Nations and from 1998 to 2001 as secretary of energy. After

leaving the Clinton administration, Richardson taught at Harvard’s

Kennedy School of Government and the United World College in Montezuma,

N.M., prior to being elected governor.

According

to Middlebury College President John M. McCardell Jr., Richardson’s

career has encompassed a wide array of interests. McCardell said, “Bill

Richardson has negotiated the release of prisoners from Saddam Hussein.

He has worked to reform a large government agency, the Department of Energy.

And he has served the people of New Mexico, first as their representative

and now as their governor. We are honored to recognize a man who has used

his many talents to work on behalf of both his state and his country.”

The College also will present honorary degrees to six other distinguished

individuals, including Frederic W. Allen, who will receive

a Doctor of Laws degree. A native of Burlington who now lives in Shelburne,

Allen practiced law from 1951 to 1984 with the firm of Wick, Dinse and

Allen in Burlington. He served as chief justice of the Vermont Supreme

Court from 1984 through 1996, and was named a justice emeritus upon his

retirement from the court. He was a member of the Middlebury College board

of trustees from 1988 to 1998, and is the father of Zachariah Allen, a

member of the class of 2003.

The

College will award Deborah Bial a Doctor of Humane Letters

degree. Bial is the founder and president of the Posse Foundation, a nonprofit

organization that identifies, recruits and selects student leaders from

public high schools to form multicultural support teams called “posses.”

These teams then prepare, through an intensive eight-month training program,

to pursue academics and to promote cross-cultural communication upon their

enrollment at top colleges and universities nationwide. Middlebury’s

first posse will graduate in May. Prior to founding Posse, Bial held positions

at several organizations, including the New York Urban Coalition and the

CityKids Foundation.

David Herbert Donald will receive a Doctor of Letters

degree. Donald is the Charles Warren Professor of American History and

professor of American civilization emeritus at Harvard University. One

of the nation’s leading historians of the Civil War and the American

South, he is also the author of numerous books, including “Lincoln’s

Herndon,” “Lincoln Reconsidered,” and, with J.G. Randall,

“The Civil War and Reconstruction.” He has twice won the Pulitzer

Prize for biography: in 1961 for “Charles Sumner and the Coming

of the Civil War” and in 1988 for “Look Homeward: A Life of

Thomas Wolfe.” His book “Lincoln,” published in 1995,

was on The New York Times best-seller list for 14 weeks and won numerous

honors, including an award from the American Library Association for distinguished

nonfiction.

The College will present Eve Ensler with a Doctor of

Letters degree. Ensler, a member of the Middlebury College class of 1975,

is a playwright, activist and the artistic director and founder of V-Day,

a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. Named one

of Worth magazine’s best charities, the organization has raised

more than $13.5 million in five years for anti-violence groups through

benefit performances of “The Vagina Monologues,” Ensler’s

Obie Award-winning play. Translated into 25 languages, “The Vagina

Monologues” has been performed in theatres around the world. Other

plays by Ensler include “Extraordinary Measures” and “Necessary

Targets.” She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting

and many other theatrical awards.

The

College will award Julie Johnson Kidd a Doctor of Humane

Letters degree. A 1967 graduate of Middlebury College and a trustee from

1974 to 1982, Kidd is the president of the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor

Foundation in New York City, a nonprofit organization that contributes

primarily to educational projects. Most awards are made to private institutions

of higher learning at the undergraduate level, and to educational outreach

programs of visual and performing arts organizations. The Johnson Foundation

has provided major funding for programs in economics and the arts at Middlebury.

Ruth

Stone
will receive a Doctor of Letters degree. A resident of

Goshen, Stone is the recipient of the 2002 National Book Award in Poetry

for “In the Next Galaxy.” Born in Roanoke, Va., in 1915, Stone

is the author of seven other books of poetry, including “The Second-Hand

Coat,” “Who Is the Widow’s Muse,” “Simplicity,”

and “Ordinary Words,” which won the National Book Critics

Circle Award in 1999. Stone’s many honors also include the 2002

Wallace Stevens Prize, an annual award that recognizes outstanding and

proven mastery in the art of poetry, and two Guggenheim Fellowships. She

has taught at numerous colleges and universities, including Indiana University

at Bloomington, the University of California at Davis, and New York University.

The outdoor graduation ceremonies will take place on the lawn behind Forest

Hall on College Street (Route 125) at 10 a.m. on Sunday, May 25. More

than 4,000 family and friends are expected to attend. In the case of severe

weather, commencement will be held in Kenyon Arena on Route 30.