Lehman College
The honorary degree
recipients of the graduating class of 2007:
Adam Guettel, Doctor
of Music
Adam Guettel, Artist in Residence at the Intiman Theater in Seattle,
is a musical theater composer and lyricist who is known for the complexity of
his music and his use of various strings. His newest musical, The Light in the Piazza, premiered at Lincoln Center in 2005 and received six Tony Awards, including
Best Original Score and Best Orchestrations for Mr. Guettel, and five Drama
Desk Awards, including Best Music and Best Orchestrations.
Judith Judith
Malina, Doctor of Fine Arts
Judith Malina was born in Germany and later moved to New York City
with her father. In her studies at the Dramatic Workshop at the New School,
Erwin Piscator and his philosophy of “epic theater,” which uses drama as a
medium of political communication, influenced her. In 1947, she founded The
Living Theater with her husband and collaborator, the late Julian Beck, an
abstract expressionist painter of the New York School. Their world-famous,
award-winning avant-garde institution—the oldest experimental theatre group
in the United States—became the first to introduce New York audiences to
controversial European playwrights, such as Bertolt Brecht and Jean Cocteau.
Judith Ortiz Cofer,
Judith Ortiz Cofer, Doctor of Humane Letters
Judith Ortiz Cofer, a celebrated
novelist, poet, and essayist, has taught at the University of Georgia since
1984, where she is currently the Regents’ and Franklin Professor of English and
Creative Writing. During her career, she has written a wide range of works,
including three novels, short stories, and collections of both poetry and
essays, and received numerous awards and honors. The Latin Deli: Prose and
Poetry was selected for the 2005 “Georgia Top 25 Reading List.”
Peter D. Roos.,
Doctor of Humane Letters
Peter D. Roos is a civil rights lawyer who has spent the past forty
years fighting to improve educational opportunities for immigrants and students
of color. He has won two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases: Goss v. Lopez in 1975, which established the right of students to a hearing before suspension
or expulsion, and Plyler
v. Doe in 1981, which established the rights of undocumented
children to an elementary and secondary education. Lehman College President’s Medal Recipient
Dr. Roscoe C. Brown, Jr. is the former president of Bronx Community
College and a decorated Word War II commander of the famed Tuskegee
Airmen—America’s first African- American military airmen. In 1945, Dr.
Brown was the first American pilot in the 15th Air Force to shoot down one of
the new German jet fighters. For this, he and five other Tuskegee Airmen
received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007 on behalf of their collective
squad.
For more than twenty-five years, Dr. Brown was a full professor at New York
University, where he was the founding director of its Institute of
Afro-American Affairs.#
