Barnard College
Medal Of Distinction
Recipients 2007
Joan Didion’s
most recent book, The
Year of Magical Thinking, received the 2005 National Book Award for
nonfiction. Her work includes such novels as Play
It As It Lays, such works of nonfiction as Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and The White Album and
such political analysis as Miami,
and Political
Fictions. Her play, The
Year of Magical Thinking, opened recently. With her late husband,
the writer John Gregory Dunne, she also worked on a number of motion pictures.
She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which awarded her
its 2005 Gold Medal in nonfiction. She received the 1999 Columbia Journalism
Award, the 2002 George Polk Book Award, and an honorary doctorate from
Columbia.
Nicholas D. Kristof,
an op-ed columnist for The
New York Times, was associate managing editor, responsible for the Sunday Times.
He graduated from Harvard College, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford where he
studied law. He later studied Arabic in Cairo and Chinese in Taipei. Mr.
Kristof has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to 120
countries, plus all 50 states, every Chinese province and every main Japanese
island.
At The Times he served as bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo. In 1990 Mr. Kristof
and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, also a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for
their coverage of China’s Tiananmen Square democracy movement. They were the
first married couple to win a Pulitzer for journalism. Mr. Kristof won a second
Pulitzer in 2006, for commentary
Mary Patterson
McPherson is President Emeritus of Bryn Mawr, Vice President of The
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Executive Officer of the American Philosophical
Society. She received her AB and LLD from Smith College, an MA from the
University of Delaware and a PhD from Bryn Mawr College. McPherson holds
numerous honorary degrees. Before joining Bryn Mawr College as an assistant in
the department of philosophy, McPherson was an instructor at the University of
Delaware. At Bryn Mawr she served as dean of the undergraduate college, deputy
to the president and then president.
Muriel Petioni,
B.S., M.D., born in Trinidad and raised in Harlem, graduated from
Howard University College of Medicine, the only female in its Class of 1937.
After internship at Harlem Hospital she worked at several southern black colleges
before establishing a practice in Harlem taking over the 131st Street offices
of her physician father. She served as a caring family doctor for four decades,
working tirelessly as an advocate for health care for the underserved.
She founded the Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward Medical Society, named for the
first African-American woman to practice medicine in New York State and
organized the Medical Women of the National Medical Association. She founded
the Friends of Harlem Hospital Center, which raised almost two million dollars
during her seventeen-year chairmanship.
Anna Deavere Smith is an actress, playwright, teacher and author who created a new form of
theater, which is part journalism, part theater. Most of her plays take
controversial subjects and present them from multiple points of view. She plays
as many as 46 characters in the course of an evening. Of her Broadway show, Twilight: Los Angeles,
The New York Times said of her performance, “[she is] the ultimate
impressionist: she does people’s souls.” She played Nancy McNally, the National
Security Advisor, on NBC’s The
West Wing. She had roles in the films The
American President and The
Human Stain. Her work in the theater has garnered her several
awards, among them the prestigious MacArthur Award, two Tony nominations and
two Obies. Her books include Letters
to a Young Artist, Talk
to Me and several published plays. She is currently University
Professor at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. She has several
honorary degrees and is on the board of the Museum of Modern Art.#
