Freud, Paz, Rustin Receive Honoraries

President Bok this morning conferred honorary degrees on eight men and three women, including psychoanalyst Anna Freud, Mexican poet Octavio Paz and civil rights leader Bayard Rustin.

The recipients also included broadcaster Walter Cronkite, artist Helen Frankenthaler and Richard Lyman, outgoing president of Stanford University.

Bok also bestowed degrees on three well-known American academics, including zoologist Ernst Mayr, historian John M. Blum '43, and sociologist Robert Merton; and two British scholars, economist Joan V. Robinson and legalist Herbert L.A. Hart.

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Widely regarded as the world's leading psychoanalyst, Freud has spent almost six decades teaching, practicing and refining the techniques developed by her father, Sigmund. The foremost authority on child analysis, Freud has been director of the Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic since 1962.

In 1970, a poll of leading psychiatrists and psychoanalysts fround Freud to be the most outstanding living psychoanalyst.

The last of her father's six children, the 85-year-old Freud was her father's companion, secretary and student from 1913 until his death in 1939. She is most renowned for her work on the psychoanalysis of children and her theories of "ego psychology." More recently, Freud has argued for the legal rights of children.

Since 1922 when she delivered her first paper as a young student in Vienna, Freud has written prolifically with what psychologist Robert Coles has called "luminous coherence." Her works include the ground-breaking, The Ego and Mechanisms of Defense, and a variety of studies of child analysis. More recently, critics have praised The Writings of Anna Freud, a seven-volume collection of her works.

Freud, who has lived in London since 1938, last received an honorary degree at Columbia University's 1978 ceremonies.

Her citation reads: Seeing into the minds of children she has championed their needs and enhanced our understanding of the growth of human personality.

One of a group of Latin American writers who have profoundly influenced the policies of their nations, Paz is a poet, essayist, diplomat, critic and professor. Sixteen years in Mexico's diplomatic service gave the 66-year-old Paz the chance he needed to begin writing. Today, as countryman and novelist Carlos Fuentes has labelled him, Paz is "the greatest living Mexican writer, a great renovator of the Spanish language, a great universal poet and essayist."

Since his first work in the early thirties, Paz has been identified with the surrealist writers, a school he once described as "a negation of the contemporary world and at the same time an attempt to substitute other values for those of democratic, bourgeois society." His best-known works include El Laberinto de la Soledad (The Labyrinth of Solitude), an essay on Mexican character described by Irving Howe as "a central text of our time" and long metaphysical poems like Piedra de sol (Sun Stone) and Blanco.

In 1971-72, Paz was the Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard, where he lectured on "Modern Poetry: A Tradition Against Itself." Later, he was a visiting professor of Comparative Literature here.

Paz's citation reads: A public servant of integrity and courage, a poet whose metaphors define the alternating currents of life.

An ardent pacifist and fighter for civil rights, Rustin has been involved in the movement for racial equality since his days as youth coordinator for A. Philip Randolph's March on Washington. Special assistant to the late Rev. Martin Luther King and the chief organizer of the civil rights March on Washington of August, 1963, Rustin has continually espoused non-violence and has advocated fundamental changes in the U.S. socioeconomic order.

Dubbed "the Socrates of the civil rights movement" by Nat Hentoff, Rustin worked as an organizer of the Congress of Racial Equality and director of the first New York City public school boycott. He has been arrested 23 times for the causes of civil rights and peace, once spending 22 days on a chain gang in North Carolina. Since 1964, he has served as executive director of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, a service center and clearinghouse for civil rights groups.

His citation reads: Though the fight is not yet won, his life exemplifies the unflagging struggle for opportunity and justice.

Consistently voted the most trusted man in America, Cronkite, who delivered yesterday's Class Day address, has been the managing editor and anchorman of the CBS Evening News since 1962. The nation's preeminent broadcaster, he was once described by author David L. Halberstam '55 as "the definitive centrist American who reflects the essential decency of American society as much as anyone can."

Since his days as a newspaper reporter for the Houston Post and a wire services reporter--he waded ashore with the Allied troops at Normady--Cronkite has consistently downplayed his achievements. "I don't understand my impact or my success," he once told an interviewer. "That my delivery is straight, even dull at times, is probably a valid criticism. But I built my reputation on honest, straightforward reporting. To do anything else would be phony. I'd be selling myself and not the news."

Cronkite's citation reads: In an era of instant news, he is a preeminent figure in contemporary journalism, friendly, reliable, percipient, forever telling us 'the way it is.'

Dubbed the "poet's painter," Frankenthaler has been one of the leading figures in the second generation of abstract expressionist artists. Her "bleeding edge" techniques and pale, free-flowing colors have earned her a reputation as a constantly improvising but singular voice in modern art. "Her paintings have the quality of some delicate, nameless organism, which opens and closes almost imperceptibly beneath our gaze," one critic wrote.

Frankenthaler's works have been exhibited throughout the world; her most acclaimed include Jacob's Ladder, awarded a first prize at the 1959 Biennale de Paris, Trojan Gates and Blue Territory. Frankenthaler once told an interviewer, "Painting is a matter of making some kind of beautiful order out of human feeling and experience."

Her citation reads: Her influence as teacher and artist has beautifully refined the rough edges of abstract art.

An expert in contemporary British history and the author of several works on modern Western Europe, Lyman has been president of Stanford since 1970. Lyman, who received both his masters and doctoral degrees from Harvard, will leave Stanford this month to head the Rockefeller Foundation.

One of a wave of university presidents brought in to quell unrest on college campuses during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lyman served as provost of the university for three-and-a-half years before his appointment as president. An organizer of one of the country's first teach-ins on the Vietnam War, he became less vocal publicly after assuming the presidency. He is credited with introducing important changes in Stanford's admissions and curricular policies.

Lyman's citation reads: Proudly we greet this son of Harvard, Stanford's leader in troubled times, spokesman for all of higher education, ever alert to new paths toward academic excellence and high achievement.

Mayr, Agassiz Professor of Zoology Emeritus at Harvard, is one of the world's foremost experts on evolution, although his work of more than four decades spans the gamut of ornithology, systematics and the history and philosophy of biology. Director of the University's Museum of Comparative Zoology from 1961 to 1970, he has written many volumes on evolution, including Populations, Species and Evolution, Systematics and the Origins of Species and Evolution and the Diversity of Life.

Although much of his work has focused on the study of birds, Mayr once wrote that "as a lifelong naturalist, I have been interested in the well-nigh inconceivable diversity of the living world, its origin and meaning." Born in Germany and educated at the University of Berlin, he has dedicated his scientific career, in his own words, to "a clarification of evolutionary concepts and processes."

Mayr's citation. The learned heir of Audobon and Agassiz, he guided a great research museum to new pinnacles of distinction.

A member of the Harvard Corporation from 1970-1979, Blum is widely recognized as one of the foremost authorities on 20th-century American history. He has taught at Yale since 1957 and is the first holder of the Woodward chair in American history.

His writings include The Republican Roosevelt, The National Experience, The Promise of America and works on Henry Morgenthau, Franklin D. Roosevelt '04 and Henry A. Wallace. Blum, who received both a masters and doctorate from Harvard, once wrote that "within the rhyme and meter of American history, I have made men the subject of my first concern."

His citation reads: An historian clear and discerning, a teacher kind and encouraging, a Fellow acutely sensitive to all of Harvard's concerns.

Author of the classic Social Theory and Social Structure, Merton has been a University professor at Columbia since 1974. The recipient of numerous awards and degrees, Merton did graduate work at Harvard with the late Talcott Parsons and went on to develop a theory of social adaptation, which includes "conformists, innovators, ritualists, retreatists and rebels."

The 69-year-old Merton held Columbia's Giddings chair in sociology until 1974 and is the author of many works, including The Sociology of Science and On the Shoulders of Giants. Known first for his 1950s study on how medical students acquire the values and emotional resources to become physicians, he is often called "Mr. Sociology."

Merton's citation reads: Eminent scholar-teacher, Harvard bred; his path-breaking studies have advanced his discipline and enlarged our understanding of human organizations."

Writer, co-author and editor of 18 books, Robinson is professor of economics Emeritus at Cambridge University, where she taught for more than 40 years. Her 1933 classic, Economics of Imperfect Competition, restated the theory of values and is still considered one of the leading works in the field.

The 76-year-old economist, educated at Cambridge, is also the author of works on Marxian economics, theories of economic growth, economic philosophy and China's Cultural Revolution.

Her citation reads: With insight and elegance she has examined the imperfections of the market and revealed the inconsistencies of poverty and wealth, scarcity and abundance.

A visiting professor at Harvard from 1956-57, hart was professor of jurisprudence at Oxford from 1952 to 1968 and is currently an honorary fellow of Oxford University College. One of the leading experts in legal philosophy, Hart's ground-breaking work of 1961, The Concept of Law, still provides the foundations of debate for legal philosophers.

Hart, 74 years old, has struggled to define the relationship between law, coercion and morality; he is author of Law, Liberty and Morality, The Morality of the Criminal Law, and Punishment and Responsibility.

His citation reads: Illustrious professor of philosophy of law, he forges stronger links between law and morality, punishment and responsiblity.

President Bok this morning conferred honorary degrees on:

Walter Cronkite, broadcaster--Doctor of Laws;

Ernst Mayr, ornithologist and Agassiz Professor of Zoology Emeritus at Harvard--Doctor of Science;

John Morton Blum '43, historian and Woodward professor of American history at Yale University--Doctor of Laws;

Robert Merton, sociologist and University professor at Columbia University--Doctor of Laws;

Octavio Paz, poet, essayist--Doctor of Letters;

Joan V. Robinson, economist and professor of economics Emeritus at Cambridge University--Doctor of Laws;

Richard Wall Lyman, outgoing president of Stanford University--Doctor of Laws;

Herbert L.A. Hart, legalist and former professor of jurisprudence at Oxford University--Doctor of Laws;

Helen Frankenthaler, artist--Doctor of Arts;

Bayard Rustin, civil rights leader--Doctor of Laws; and

Anna Freud, psychoanalyst, author--Doctor of Science.