Wiesner, Ellison, Sills Win Honoraries

Harvard today awarded honorary doctorates to two women and five men, including MIT President Jerome B. Wiesner, novelist Ralph Ellison, world renowned cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, and opera star Beverly Sills.

Also cited by the University were the Most Rev. Helder Camara, Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil; Chien-Shiung Wu, an experimental nuclear physicist; and Clifford Geertz, a social anthorpologist.

The seven awards are the fewest Harvard has conferred in honorary degree ceremonies in at least a decade. The University last year granted 12 honorary degrees--three to women and nine to men.

In another unusual action, the University awarded no Doctor of Arts degree this year, but instead conferred two Doctors of Music.

Wiesner became president of MIT in March 1971--two months after the appointment of President Bok--and, like Bok, was considered to be part of a swing by academic institutions toward younger, more aggressive leadership. MIT's 13th president, he previously served as its provost and dean of the MIT School of Science.

An outspoken critic of the antiballistic missile system, Wiesner served as national science adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy '40 and Lyndon B. Johnson. He was instrumental in obtaining Senate passage of the 1963 treaty banning nuclear testing in the atmosphere, oceans and outer space.

President Bok awarded Wiesner a Doctor of Laws degree. The citation read: "In education a scientist gifted and humane, in the nation's service a counsellor wise and moderate, in Cambridge our warm friend and good neighbor."

Ellison, who received a Doctor of Letters, is best known for his novel Invisible Man. The book details the odyssey of a Southern black who moves North in an attempt to find freedom and instead finds oppression rooted in the structure of American society. The book won the National Book Award and the National Newspaper Publishers Russwurm Award, as well as wide critical acclaim.

In 1969, Ellison received the Medal of Freedom--the nation's highest civilian honor--from President Johnson. He has collected a number of other honoraria, including the Chevalier de l'Ordre Arts et Letters of France, honorary degrees from eight institutions, and several fellowships.

Ellison has called the writer's morality "one which expresses a vision of human life. It contains a sense of what's right and wrong--what is life-preserving against that which is life-destroying."

"If Negro writers ever become the mainstay of American literature," he has said, "it will be because they have learned their craft and used the intensity both emotional and political of their group experience to express a greater area of American experience than other writers of other groups."

The citation on Ellison's award reads: "Out of experience proudly inherited and thoughtfully observed, this deeply American writer asserts with clarity and power man's eternal search for his humanity."

Rostropovich, who received a Doctor of Music, is one of the Soviet Union's leading cellists, and is regarded by many music critics to be the late Pablo Casals's heir to the title of foremost cellist of modern time.

The Soviet musician has been an outspoken defender of artistic freedom in the USSR, and he sheltered novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn prior to the author's exile.

Rostropovich learned piano from his mother and cello from his father. He composed his first piece at age four.

"It is my aim. my destination in life to make the cello as beloved an instrument as the violin and piano," Rostropovich has said. "But this cannot be until there are more and great new works for the cello." Thus he has inspired composers such as Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Miaskovsky, Kabalevsky, Piston and Britten to write repeatedly for him.

The citation on his award reads: "Touched with the warmth and enthusiasm of his person, his musical genius transcends national boundaries and has come to belong to all of us."

Another Doctor of Music was awarded to Beverly Sills, the renowned lyric coloratura soprano and leading singer of the New York City Opera Company.

Sills has risen to fame since 1966, when she sang Cleopatra in the New York City Opera's production of Handel's "Julius Caesar."

"Audiences and critics realized for the first time that they were in the presence of a diva of historical importance," wrote a New Yorker reviewer. "She tossed off all of Handel's difficult fioriture with exemplary intonation, faultless agility, and a warmth of tone that is seldom encountered in singers of her type...The production was a stunning one."

Her musical career began much earlier, however: At the age of two she was already appearing on WOR radio's show "Uncle Bob's Rainbow Room" as Bubbles Silverman--and the nickname of Bubbles has lasted through the years among members of her family.

As a child, she sang in several radio programs as well as in commercials (Sills brought the product Rinso White fame). Her operatic debut came in the 1950s with the San Francisco Opera.

Since then, she has sung most of the roles written for lighter soprano, both lyric. and coloratura. In the process, she has come to be regarded by critics as one of the world's three or four operatic "superstars." She will soon make her debut with the Metropolitan Opera.

Her citation: "Her joyous personality, glorious voice, and deep knowledge of music and drama bring delight to her audiences and distinction to her art."

An Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church, Camara has gained notariety for championing the cause of the poor and oppressed, particularly in the Northeastern part of Brazil, one of the poorest sections of the world.

"Without agrarian reform, the almost inhuman misery of the rural workers will persist," he has said. "Without banking reform, little will be done for the development of the country, and without fiscal reform, the rich will continue to grow richer while the poor will continue to suffer."

"Without electoral reform, the elections will appear to be free but in fact will be subjected to the power of money. Without administrative reform, bureaucracy will continue to sap the strength of public life."

Camara's efforts at social reform have brought strong negative response from right-wing businessmen and landowners in Brazil, as well as criticism from conservative factions of his own church.

They have, in addition, provoked atrocities from a Brazilian government primarily concerned with growth, law and order. Some priests, including Camara's personal assistants, have been imprisoned, tortured and slain.

Camara has become a symbol of Catholic opposition to military dictatorship in Brazil and throughout Latin America.

His citation describes him as "a tireless opponent of poverty and injustice, a stalwart Christian leader offering life and hope to the downtrodden and defeated."

Chien-Shiung Wu, the second of this year's female honorary degree recipients, received a Doctor of Science degree. The Michael Pupit. Professor of Physics at Columbia University, Wu has done intensive study in the fields of nuclear forces and structure.

She is best known in the scientific world for her experimental demonstration of a nuclear theory--the non-conservation of parity in beta decay--suggested by two Nobel prize-winners, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang.

Wu was born in Liu Ho, China, and studied at the Central University of Nanking, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in 1936. The same year, she came to the United States to do graduate work at the University of California under Ernest O. Laurence, who won the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the cyclotron.

The citation on her degree reads: "A resourceful experimentalist whose brilliant research has fundamentally altered scientific concepts of the structure of matter."

Clifford Geertz, who received a Doctor of Laws, is a social anthropologist and a member of the faculty of the School of Social Science of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton,

Geertz is best known his studies regarding changing religious attitudes and habits among the Islamic peoples of Morrocco and Indonesia, where he served as a Ford Foundation consultant. He recently published a book entitled Islam Observed.

He received an A.B. from Antioch in 1950 and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1956, and has taught at Harvard, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago.

Geertz's citation reads: "A deserving scholar who with masterly skill probes ancient societies for new light on the relation of religious belief to human behavior."

The following seven people received honorary degrees at the 323rd Commencement exercises in Tercentenary Theater today:

The Most Rev. Helder Camara, Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil, and social activist, a Doctor of Laws.

Ralph Ellison, prizewinning novelist, a Doctor of Letters.

Clifford Geertz, social anthropologist, a Doctor of Laws.

Mstislav Rostropovich, world-renowned Russian cellist, a Doctor of Music.

Beverly Sills, American prima diva, a Doctor of Music.

Jerome B. Wiesner, president of MIT, a Doctor of Laws.

Chien-Shiung Wu, experimental nuclear physicist, a Doctor of Science.

Geertz is best known his studies regarding changing religious attitudes and habits among the Islamic peoples of Morrocco and Indonesia, where he served as a Ford Foundation consultant. He recently published a book entitled Islam Observed.

He received an A.B. from Antioch in 1950 and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1956, and has taught at Harvard, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago.

Geertz's citation reads: "A deserving scholar who with masterly skill probes ancient societies for new light on the relation of religious belief to human behavior."

The following seven people received honorary degrees at the 323rd Commencement exercises in Tercentenary Theater today:

The Most Rev. Helder Camara, Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil, and social activist, a Doctor of Laws.

Ralph Ellison, prizewinning novelist, a Doctor of Letters.

Clifford Geertz, social anthropologist, a Doctor of Laws.

Mstislav Rostropovich, world-renowned Russian cellist, a Doctor of Music.

Beverly Sills, American prima diva, a Doctor of Music.

Jerome B. Wiesner, president of MIT, a Doctor of Laws.

Chien-Shiung Wu, experimental nuclear physicist, a Doctor of Science.

He received an A.B. from Antioch in 1950 and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1956, and has taught at Harvard, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago.

Geertz's citation reads: "A deserving scholar who with masterly skill probes ancient societies for new light on the relation of religious belief to human behavior."

The following seven people received honorary degrees at the 323rd Commencement exercises in Tercentenary Theater today:

The Most Rev. Helder Camara, Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil, and social activist, a Doctor of Laws.

Ralph Ellison, prizewinning novelist, a Doctor of Letters.

Clifford Geertz, social anthropologist, a Doctor of Laws.

Mstislav Rostropovich, world-renowned Russian cellist, a Doctor of Music.

Beverly Sills, American prima diva, a Doctor of Music.

Jerome B. Wiesner, president of MIT, a Doctor of Laws.

Chien-Shiung Wu, experimental nuclear physicist, a Doctor of Science.