Deborah Harkness, historian and best-selling author of the All Souls series of novels, will deliver the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College Commencement address on Sunday, May 31, 2026.

For more than 30 years, Harkness taught the history of science, medicine, and magic, recently retiring as professor emerita of history at the University of Southern California. During that time, she published five novels in her All Souls series, including her debut novel, The New York Times best-selling A Discovery of Witches, which was also adapted into an enormously popular television series by the same name. Harkness will receive a Doctor of Letters degree. She will be joined by three other honorary degree recipients:

• H. Scott Bierman ’77, a leading economist in the study of game theory, president emeritus of Beloit College, and a former member of the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ Board of Trustees, will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
• Ru Gunawardane ’95, a biologist who has led groundbreaking research efforts in cell biology and drug therapies, will receive a Doctor of Science degree.
• Seema Hingorani, an investment executive at Morgan Stanley and founder of the nonprofit Girls Who Invest, will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters degree.

“We are delighted to be honoring four outstanding and accomplished individuals alongside the Class of 2026,” said ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ President Garry W. Jenkins. “Each of them has a unique ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ connection — and each of them has made impressive and meaningful contributions to the world and to human understanding.”

The 160th Commencement ceremony begins on Sunday, May 31, at 10 a.m. on the Historic Quad, with a livestream available on the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College website and social media platforms.

H. Scott Bierman ’77

H. Scott Bierman ’77 has built a distinguished career not only as an economist and educator, but also as a leader in higher education. As the 11^th president of Beloit College in Beloit, Wis., he served from 2009 until his retirement in 2023. This followed 27 years at Carleton College, during which time Bierman was the inaugural Ada M. Harrison Chair of Teaching Social Sciences and Professor of Economics and served as dean of the college (2005-2009). 

Bierman graduated from ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ in 1977, earning a bachelor of arts degree in economics and mathematics. He then earned a Ph.D. in economics in 1985 at the University of Virginia. While on the Carleton faculty, he taught courses in economics of the public sector, industrial organization, game theory, and behavioral economics. Bierman’s Game Theory with Economic Applications, which he co-wrote in 1992, is considered an essential contribution to the field. 

Bierman brought his liberal arts college experience, as both faculty and senior academic administrator, to his work as a member of the Board of Trustees at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ for three five-year terms. Shortly after retiring from the board, Bierman served as special advisor to the presidential search committee that brought Garry W. Jenkins to ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝. 

Ru Gunawardane ’95 

Throughout her career as a biologist, Ru Gunawardane ’95 has led research efforts exploring novel drug therapies and technology to treat disease. She is currently the executive vice president and director of the Allen Institute for Cell Science, a role that combines her experience in both academic and biotechnology settings with her passion for cell biology. 

Located in Seattle, Wash., the prominent nonprofit research institute is focused on studying how information encoded in human genes becomes cells, how these cells create organs and tissues, and how cells change when they are diseased, with the goal of driving advancements in cancer therapies and regenerative medicine. Gunawardane leads a highly multidisciplinary team of scientists, engineers, and other specialists working together to understand the basic principles of how cells organize themselves and transition across cell states. 

Gunawardane has served as executive vice president and director at the Allen Institute since 2020. She joined the institute at its inception in 2015 as the director of stem cells and gene editing. In this role, she led the creation of the Allen Cell Collection, a publicly available set of gene-edited human stem cells that was the first of its kind. 

Earlier, Gunawardane worked in both large pharmaceutical and start-up environments, including Amgen and Ambit Biosciences, on projects exploring drug treatments pertaining to oncology, inflammation, and cardiovascular disease. She majored in biochemistry at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝, then earned her Ph.D. in biology from Johns Hopkins University. She completed her postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School, where she studied breast cell migration and invasion.

In recent years, Gunawardane has often met with ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ STEM Scholars to share advice about the importance of networking with alumni, pursuing internships, and exploring other opportunities to prepare for careers in science.

Deborah Harkness

Deborah Harkness is a professional historian and the author of The New York Times best-selling All Souls novels, published in 39 countries and languages. 

Harkness is now a professor emerita of history at the University of Southern California, where she retired from her role as a full-time professor in 2025 after 21 years with the university. At USC, she taught courses on European history and the history of science. Earlier in her career, she taught medical history at the Northwestern University Medical School, the history of science and medicine at the University of California, Davis, paleography at the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in Oxford, England, and early modern European history at Colgate University.

She published A Discovery of Witches, the first book in what would become the All Souls series, in 2011, prompted by wondering to herself, “If there really are witches and vampires, what do they do for a living?” All Souls’ lead character is a ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ alumna: Diana Bishop, a historian of alchemy and Yale professor who also attended Oxford — not dissimilar from Harkness herself, who has spoken about having applied and been accepted to ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝. After their wide success in print, the books were adapted into a multi-year television series that premiered in 2018. 

Prior to her novels, Harkness published two works of historical scholarship: John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge University Press, 1999) and The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (Yale University Press, 2007). She has received numerous accolades for her work, including fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the National Humanities Center.

Harkness earned her bachelor’s degree from Mount Holyoke College, her master’s degree from Northwestern University, and her P.h.D. from the University of California, Davis, during which she researched the history of magic and science in Europe, particularly from 1500 to 1700. Her research has taken her to libraries around the world, including Oxford University’s Bodleian Library, which plays a central role in All Souls. Harkness is also an advocate for ovarian cancer awareness; she was diagnosed with the disease in 2021 and has publicly shared her experience throughout treatment.

Seema R. Hingorani

Seema R. Hingorani has used her expertise to lift up girls and women and to create access to opportunity. Hingorani has thirty years of investment experience across both the private and public sectors. She is currently a managing director, senior client advisor, and member of the Operating Committee at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. As a member of the senior leadership team at Morgan Stanley, she focuses on strategic client relationships, investment talent development, and diversity initiatives. 

Hingorani is also the founder and board chair of Girls Who Invest, a national nonprofit organization that aims to balance the gender inequity in portfolio management and executive leadership in the investment management industry. Founded in 2015, Girls Who Invest provides not only educational programs, and a meaningful paid internship for talented and interested young women, but also provides a robust, ongoing support community. Over the past ten years, more than 4,000 college women have participated in the program, with three out of four remaining in the finance industry, increasing opportunity and laying a foundation to address significant gender underrepresentation in the leadership of finance. 

Hingorani earned degrees in psychology and philosophy at Yale University and an MBA in finance from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Congressman John Lewis of Georgia will deliver the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ Commencement address and receive an honorary degree on Sunday, May 29.

Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, often called “one of the most courageous persons the civil rights movement ever produced,” will deliver the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College Commencement address and receive an honorary degree on Sunday, May 29.

For its 150th commencement, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ will welcome Lewis and three fellow honorary degree recipients whose achievements in literature, psychology, and higher education have touched the lives of millions worldwide:

• Lisa Genova ’92, neuroscientist and author of the bestselling novel Still Alice, whose empathetic insights into the workings of the brain have touched millionsÍľ
• Daniel Gilbert, renowned psychologist and author of Stumbling on Happiness, whose work resulted in new understandings of human emotions;
• Robert Witt ’62, higher education leader who transformed the University of Alabama into one of the country’s best public universities.

“We are profoundly honored to be joined for this historic Commencement by these distinguished leaders, two of whom we are proud to claim as our own graduates,” said President Clayton Spencer. “And we are thrilled that the Commencement address will be delivered by Congressman Lewis, whose life and work exemplify the animating values of this institution.”  

ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝, founded in 1855, was coeducational from its origin, and educated a number of important civil rights leaders, including Benjamin Elijah Mays, Class of 1920, who was president of Morehouse College from 1940 to 1967 and mentor to Martin Luther King Jr.

Commencement concludes the undergraduate careers of the 461 members of the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ Class of 2016, representing more than 30 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, and roughly 40 countries.

+John Lewis, Doctor of Humane Letters

+Lisa Genova '92, Doctor of Humane Letters

+Daniel Gilbert, Doctor of Letters

+Robert Witt '62, Doctor of Humane Letters

Leila Schneps.

ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ presents lecturers offering insight into mathematics and medical technology on Feb. 26 and 28.

Leila Schneps, a mathematician specializing in number theory (and moonlighting as a murder-mystery author), gives two talks under the auspices of the Sampson Lecture Series on Feb. 26. At 4:30 p.m., she gives the technical talk Multiple Zeta Values: Crossroads of Number Theory, Geometry and Algebra in Room 104 of Hathorn Hall, 3 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

In an event aimed at a mainstream audience, she gives a lecture titled Math on Trial: Probability in the Judicial Process at 7:30 p.m. in the Benjamin E. Mays Center, 95 Russell St.

Robert S. Langer, one of the best-known figures in engineering, offers two lectures on Friday, Feb. 28, under the auspices of the George S. Hammond ’43 D.Sc. ’73 Eminent Scientist Lectures, sponsored by the chemistry department.

He gives the technical lecture Novel Drug Delivery Systems and the Application of High Throughput Approaches to Drug Delivery and Stem Cell Technologies at 4:10 p.m. in Room 119, Dana Chemistry Hall, 5 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

At 7:30 p.m., Langer delivers a talk for the lay audience titled Biomaterials for the 21st Century and How They Will Change Our Lives in Olin Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

All four lectures are open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required for the Langer evening event, available at .

For more information about the Schneps talks, please call 207-755-5978. For more information about the Langer appearances, please call 207-786-6292.

An American mathematician, Schneps is a researcher at the French National Scientific Research Center, specializing in number theory and algebraic geometry.

She has a long-standing interest in the mathematical aspects of crime detection, focusing on ways in which math — through both the correctness of its application and the manner of its presentation by expert witnesses — can influence trial outcomes and lead judge and jury toward the truth, or away from it.

Inventor Robert Langer. (Donna Coveney/MIT)

Schneps and her daughter, Coralie Colmez, co-wrote Math on Trial: How Numbers Get Used and Abused in the Courtroom (Basic Books, 2013). They are members of the Bayes in Law Research Consortium, an international team devoted to improving the use of probability and statistics in criminal trials.

Writing as Catherine Shaw, Schneps has also published several murder mystery novels, set in the legendary mathematics department of Cambridge University in the 19th century and built around a real math problem that tested the greatest minds of the time.

The annual Sampson Lecture honors the late Professor Richard W. Sampson, who taught math at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ for 38 years.

Langer is the David H. Koch Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (an Institute Professorship being the highest honor that can be awarded to an MIT faculty member). Langer received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ in 2011.

Langer’s work has led to products that treat cancer, diabetes, heart disease and schizophrenia, among other diseases. MIT’s Langer Laboratory is on the front lines of turning research discoveries into drugs and drug delivery systems.

Langer has written more than 1,230 articles and has some 512 patents issued worldwide. His patents have been licensed or sublicensed to more than 250 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies. He has received more than 220 major awards, including the U.S. National Medal of Science, the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation, and the Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers.

The Hammond Eminent Scientist Lecture Fund is given in honor of George S. Hammond by his associates and students from Iowa State College under the guidance of Jay K. Kochi. The fund supports lectures by scientists specifically chosen by students and faculty in the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ chemistry department. Hammond, who died in 2005, is widely credited with creating the discipline of organic photochemistry.

An internationally renowned pianist based at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝, a leading scholar on the intersection of medicine and race, and a distinguished MIT researcher and inventor will speak and receive honorary degrees during ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College’s 145th commencement ceremony at 10 a.m. Sunday, May 29, on the college’s historic Quad, at Campus Avenue and College Street.

The event concludes the undergraduate careers of the approximately 440 members of the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ class of 2011, representing 35 states and 42 countries.

The 2011 ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ honorands are (in alphabetical order):

Frank Glazer, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ Artist in Residence and Lecturer in Music

Internationally known for his artistry and dedication, beloved for his generosity and celebrated for his artistic longevity, Frank Glazer made his concert debut on a vaudeville stage in Milwaukee in 1927, when he was 12 years old. The event began a performing career that’s still in progress.

A protĂ©gĂ© of legendary pianist Artur Schnabel and composer Arnold Schoenberg, Glazer made his New York debut in 1936 at Town Hall, and his orchestral debut as soloist three years later with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Koussevitzky. Glazer’s career hit its stride following World War II military service and, more to the point, a two-year effort to reinvent his piano technique. This study produced a relaxed, economical style central to both Glazer’s artistry and his astonishing musical longevity in a field where hand problems are endemic.

Glazer began teaching at the Eastman School of Music in 1965, and in 1977 came to ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝, where he became an artist-in-residence in 1980. He has played countless solo, chamber ensemble and orchestral concerts; made more than 60 recordings, including two released by ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ in 2010; hosted his own television program in the 1950s; and, in Maine, co-founded the New England Piano Quartette and two chamber music series. Glazer’s recent performances at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ include a season-long survey of all 32 Beethoven sonatas in 2009–10 and, early this year, three “Sundays with Schubert.”

In a 2006 interview, Glazer said: “I don’t know what retirement means. I’ve worked all my life to get to this point, where I like the sounds I hear.”

Evelynn M. Hammonds, Dean of Harvard College

Considered one of the leading scholars in the field of the intersection of medicine and race, Hammonds began her tenure as dean of Harvard College in 2008. Prior to her appointment she served as Harvard University’s first Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity. She is also the Barbara Gutman Rosenkrantz Professor of History of Science and of African and African American Studies.

Hammonds joined the Harvard faculty in 2002 after teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was also the founding director of the Center for the Study of Diversity in Science, Technology and Medicine. Her scholarly interests include the history of scientific, medical, and sociopolitical concepts of race and sexuality, the history of disease and public health, gender in science and medicine, and African-American history. She is the author of “Childhood’s Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 1880-1930,” many scholarly articles and the co-editor of “The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics” (MIT Press, 2008) with Rebecca M. Herzig of ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝.

Hammonds was named a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer (2003–2005) by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. She has been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and a Fellow in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Hammonds earned a doctorate at Harvard in the Department of History of Science, a master’s in physics from MIT, a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a bachelor’s degree in physics from Spelman College.

Robert S. Langer, David H. Koch Institute Professor,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Langer is one of 14 Institute Professors at MIT — the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member. He has written more than 1,100 articles, and has approximately 760 patents issued or pending worldwide. His patents are licensed or sublicensed to more than 220 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies.

He served as a member of the United States Food and Drug Administration’s Science Board, the FDA’s highest advisory board, from 1995 to 2002, and as its chairman from 1999 to 2002.

In 1989 Langer was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1992 he was elected to both the National Academy of Engineering and to the National Academy of Sciences. He is one of very few people ever elected to all three United States National Academies and the youngest in history (at age 43) to ever receive this distinction.

Langer has received more than 180 major awards including the 2006 United States National Medal of Science and the 2008 Millennium Prize, the world’s largest technology prize. The citation for his 1996 Gairdner Foundation International Award noted that “there is general agreement that Dr. Langer pioneered the field of controlled drug release delivery systems (slow release oral systems, transdermal patches, injectable microspheres and slow release implants).”

He received his bachelor’s degree in 1970 from Cornell University and his doctorate in 1974 from MIT, both in chemical engineering.

“If you want to solve all the problems that we’re facing in this world, it’s unlikely that the people and ideas that got us to where we are will be the ones that are going to get us to a different place,” Segway inventor Dean Kamen told 464 graduates at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College’ 141st Commencement ceremony.

“It’s going to require new people with new ideas. And that would be you,” Kamen said in one of the ceremony’s biggest applause lines. (See the honorands’ addresses and citations, slide shows and videos).

Inventor-entrepreneur Kamen was one of four honorary degree recipients at the ceremony, which took place under gathering clouds on the college’s historic Quad. The otherwere children’s book illustrator-author Eric Carle, actress-writer Anna Deavere Smith, and Corey Harris, a respected roots musician who graduated from ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ in 1991.

In her fifth ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ Commencement, President Elaine Tuttle Hansen led the ceremony. “This ceremony celebrates you, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ graduates — your habits of mind and soul, and our enduring pride in you,” she said. Hansen concluded by asking the assembly to applaud the people — parents, grandparents, “special others” and faculty — who had done so much to support the students in their journey to this day.

The first of the day’s honorands, Carle may be best-known for his 1969 book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which has eaten its way into the hearts of millions of children worldwide. Since Caterpillar, Carle has illustrated more than 70 books, many of them best-sellers and most of which he also wrote. More than 75 million copies of his books have been sold around the world.

Carle, who dropped out of school at 16, told the graduates of his “unerring confidence that, when I grew up, I would draw pictures.” He said, “I must warn you that following your dream comes with a price.” In his case, that price lay in not learning much about other subjects, such as math and Latin, that would have served him well later in life. “I regret that,” he said.

Carle also explained how he came to write Caterpillar, getting the idea as he punched holes in a stack of paper. “The holes made me think of a bookworm, and with the help of my good editor, the bookworm became a caterpillar” and the subject of his breakthrough book.

“You see, a good editor, a hole-puncher in good working order and a little bit of luck will take you a long way,” Carle said.

“I was asked to write a speech, but instead I’m just going to talk to you,” Harris began. Sixteen years after his own ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ graduation, the 38-year-old musician returned with a resume that includes well-regarded CDs exploring the spectrum of African-influenced New World music and a central role in a episode of Martin Scorsese’s 2003 PBS series The Blues.

Harris recounted his very first visit to ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝, when this college in a small Maine city seemed like “an outpost. I felt like I was somewhere in the North Pole.” Coming from what he regarded as an insular community in Colorado, “it’s funny that I chose ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ to see the world,” he told the graduates. “But, when I look at you all, I can see that you are the world.”

Harris credited ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ with increasing the diversity of its campus community, while reminding the graduates that in his view, if one considers the world as a whole, “there’s no such thing as a minority.”

He said, “It was at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ that I got to interact with people I never thought I’d interact with . . . This was my jumping-off point to discover the world.”

Kamen’s Segway personal transporter is the best-known of a string of sophisticated innovations that more typically aim to improve the lives of medical patients and people lacking access to basic necessities of life. College graduates are often exhorted to go fix the world, but Kamen was unusually blunt about what needs fixing and how the worst problems stack up against the worries that graduates may have, such as how to repay college loans.

Kamen reminded his listeners that “a billion people live on less than a dollar a day. And four billion — that’s two-thirds of humanity — on less than two dollars a day.”

He pointed out that the people with the education and privilege to be effective leaders are an “incredibly small minority of this planet. They have a huge advantage in the leverage they have and the control they have.”

In the traditional verbiage that colleges use in presenting honorary degrees, honorands are accorded all the “rights, privileges and responsibilities ” that pertain to the honor. Kamen had opened his address by saying he wanted to know about those privileges. But Smith, known for writing and performing plays that comment on American race relations and other social issues, jokingly responded, “I still want to know what the rights are.”

Taking community as a theme, Smith asked the students to think of community as the people not just close by, but the ones they can possible reach. “What’s so important is, how long is your reach?”

“Many of us have been educated to celebrate our own identities and to celebrate that which we understand because that’s what we came from,” she said. But she challenged her listeners to “come out of your safe houses of identity . . . to a state that I call the crossroads of ambiguity, where there is no house, where it is not safe.”

She recounted how, as someone who has stayed in plenty of hotels, she saw no point in opening the curtains when she entered her room on at the start of her visit here. Later she changed her mind and opened the curtains, realizing that daylight would help her get up in the morning.

“When I woke up this morning I saw that extraordinary waterfall,” the Androscoggin River’s Great Falls between Auburn and Lewiston. “Even at the moment when we think we know something, if we stop to open the curtains, to open our eyes, to open our hearts in another way, there just might be that waterfall. And that waterfall might lead to a new thought or a new spirit.”

The 464 members of ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝’ class of 2007 consisted of 249 women and 215 men. Fifty-five were Maine residents, out of 249 New England residents. One hundred eighty five came from other states, and 30 from other countries.

The most popular subjects in which members of the class of 2007 majored were psychology, with 51 graduates; political science, with 50; and economics, with 41. Fifty-two students took double majors.

At ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College on Monday, famed cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich let his instrument do the talking.

Instead of addressing the audience of about 1,000, Rostropovich, the retired music director of the National Symphony in Washington, performed the Sarabande in C Major from Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Cello after accepting an honorary doctor of humane letters degree during ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝’ annual Founders Day Convocation. His listeners responded with a standing ovation.

“I have been very touched and excited by my reception here,” Rostropovich said before sitting down to play. “My English is not enough; I’ll use my cello now.”

Rostropovich came to the United States from the former Soviet Union in 1977. He had been ostracized in his native country because of his support for such dissidents as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, but he has visited Russia several times in recent years to raise funds for earthquake relief, war orphans and historic landmarks.

He was music director of the National Symphony from 1977 to 1994.

ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ President Donald W. Harward cited Rostropovich for “giving voice to dissent” and for his music’s “majesty and evoking what is noble in us all.”

The convocation marked the 141st anniversary of ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝’ founding in April 1855.