The Honorees

Seven honorary degrees were awarded at Commencement. Full texts of President James Freedman's citations, excerpted here, can be viewed on the DAM website: .

SIDNEY ALTMAN, Biochemist and geneticist "For your discovery that RNA molecules can act as enzymes, capable of cutting, splicing, and reassembling themselves without outside help, you were awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1989. Your fundamental discovery has extended our understanding of the mechanics of nature and facilitated significant progress in plumbing the origins of life and in treating genetic disorders."

ROBERT LYLE BLACKMAN, Football coach: "For your outstanding qualities of leadership and character, displayed throughout your 16 years as Dartmouth's head football coach, as well as subsequently at the University of Illinois and Cornell, you were inducted in 1987 into the College Football Hall of Fame. By virtue of the life you have led, as a coach and as a man, you have instilled in thousands of young men the virtues of teamwork, commitment, compassion, and courage."

DAVID HALBERSTAM: Journalist; author of more than a dozen books, including The Best and the Brightest, The Powers That Be, and The Fifties: "It was your forthright coverage of the war in Vietnam—in which yourdispatches from isolated outposts and strategic villages controverted the administration's official version of military progress—that helped to change the course of American foreign policy and earned you the Pulitzer Prize For international reporting in 1964."

SARA LAWRENCE-LIGHTFOOT, Mac Arthur prizewinning sociologist at the Harvard Graduate School of Education; author of five books, including The Good High School; Portraitsof Character and Culture: "You have brought keen insight and disciplined sympathy to the study of schools as social systems and the socialization of children within families, communities, and schools."

DAVID MAMET, Pulitzer prizewinning playwright, director, and essayist, whose works include Sexual Perversity in Chicago, American Buffalo, and Glengarry Glen Ross: "Your plays portray the ordinary lives of the forlorn, the frustrated, the inarticulate, and the frightened, not only with sympattiy, but also with rare honesty and piercing intelligence."

DEBORAH WILLEN MEIER, Educator who has launched three innovative public elementary schools and an exceptional high school in New York City: "By focusing unapologetically upon the life of the mind, your schools promote intellectual curiosity and excitement. Sensibly organized, respectful of students, rigorous, energetic, and caring, they are designed to educate thoughtful citizens who can lead interesting and productive lives. The results have been inspiring: successful teaching, plummetingdropout rates, and skyrocketing numbers of students advancing to college."

GEORGE MASTERS WOODWELL'50, Ecoiogist and conservationist: "Your studies of DDT helped initiate the national crusade that successfully banned the use of that insecticide. Your work on forest respiration rates established the importance of tropical rainforests in the global ecosystem. As founder and president of the Woods Hole Research Center, you con- ducted seminal studies of ecological impoverishment and global warming.".