(AMHERST, Mass., April 26, 2024) — A groundbreaking mathematician and physicist, an award-winning novelist, a pioneering Asian American studies scholar, a renowned environmental activist, an acclaimed musician and a fearless civil rights advocate will each receive an honorary degree from Amherst College during Commencement on Sunday, May 26, at 10 a.m. on the school’s main quad. Amherst President Michael A. Elliott will deliver the traditional Commencement address during the ceremony, and the honorees will speak in a series of conversations that are free and open to the public on Saturday, May 25. The schedule for the weekend is on the Commencement website and will be updated as more details become available.
This year’s honorary degree recipients are:
- Duke University professor Ingrid Daubechies
- Writer Lauren Groff ’01
- University of California, Berkeley, professor emerita Elaine H. Kim
- Civil engineer Alexis Massol González
- Jazz pianist and artist Jason Moran
- Newark, N.J., attorney and activist Junius Williams ’65
The Honorees and Their Accomplishments
Ingrid Daubechies
Ingrid Daubechies, the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University, is renowned for her research on wavelets and their use in separating a signal from surrounding noise or random data, as well as her work constructing wavelets, which contributed to the development of computers. Over the course of her career, Daubechies has held positions at AT&T Bell Laboratories in New Jersey; Princeton University, where she was the first female full professor of mathematics; and Rutgers University, among other institutions. In 2000, she became the first woman to receive the National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics (now known as the Maryam Mirzakhani Prize in Mathematics), and was honored “for fundamental discoveries on wavelets and wavelet expansions and for her role in making wavelets methods a practical basic tool of applied mathematics.” In January 2005, Daubechies became the third woman since 1924 to give the prestigious Josiah Willard Gibbs Lecture, sponsored by the American Mathematical Society. The first woman elected president of the International Mathematical Union (2011), Daubechies earned a bachelor’s degree and doctorate in physics from Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her latest collaboration is an art project titled Mathemalchemy, funded by the Simons Foundation and Duke University.
Lauren Groff
Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times-bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Matrix and The Vaster Wilds, and the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won The Story Prize, ABA Indies Choice Award, France’s Grand Prix de l’Héroïne and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Most recently, she was named one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People of 2024.” Her work—which has been translated into 36 languages—regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic and elsewhere. She graduated from Amherst in 2001 and subsequently earned an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Elaine H. Kim
Elaine H. Kim is a pioneer and professor emerita in the field of Asian American and Asian diaspora studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley she has also held the positions of associate dean of the Graduate Division, faculty assistant for the status of women, and assistant dean in the College of Letters and Science, among others. Over the course of her career, Kim has written, edited and co-edited 10 books, directed or produced three video documentaries, and served as president of the Association for Asian American Studies and on the National Council of the American Studies Association. Among her recognitions are the Global Korea Award, the Asian Pacific American Heritage Lifetime Achievement Award, the Association for Asian American Studies Lifetime Achievement Award and the State of California Award for Excellence in Education. She co-founded Asian Women United of California, the Korean Community Center of the East Bay in Oakland and Asian Immigrant Women Advocates. She earned a bachelor of arts in English and American literature from the University of Pennsylvania, a master of arts in English and comparative literature from Columbia University, and a doctorate in social foundations of education from Berkeley.
Alexis Massol González
Alexis Massol González is widely known for founding (with his spouse, Tinti Deyá) Casa Pueblo, a community-based watchdog organization in south-central Puerto Rico aimed at protecting the area’s natural resources and implementing far-reaching solutions that benefit the environment and the people who live in it. Under Massol González’s leadership, Casa Pueblo administers a Forest School of approximately 150 acres, an income-generating coffee plantation that produces 100 percent arabica seeds for the group’s signature Madre Isla Coffee, an ecological guesthouse, a solar-powered radio station, a solar-powered movie theater and a growing solar grid that functions as a cooperative. Massol González has written several books, including Casa Pueblo: A Puerto Rican Model of Self Governance (2023). In 2002, he received the Goldman Environmental Prize. Currently writing a community thesis focused on the theory and practice of self-decolonization, he earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus.
Jason Moran
Jazz pianist, composer and multimedia performance artist Jason Moran is the artistic director for jazz at the Kennedy Center and a member of the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music. His trio, The Bandwagon (with drummer Nasheet Waits and bassist Tarus Mateen), has created a 25-year discography, and collaborations with Alicia Hall Moran resulted in Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration, commissioned by Carnegie Hall; BLEED for the Whitney Biennial; and Staged for the Venice Biennale. Throughout the course of his career, Moran has collaborated with many individuals, including conceptual artist Adam Pendleton, painter Kara Walker and director Ava DuVernay (creating music for her films Selma and 13th); and such organizations as Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence dance co. and the New York City Ballet. A solo exhibition, Jason Moran: Black Stars: Writing in the Dark, is currently on view at MASS MoCA in North Adams through November 2024. Moran was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010 and was recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music.
Junius Williams
Junius Williams is a nationally recognized attorney, musician and educator who has been at the forefront of the civil and human rights movements in the U.S. for decades. The youngest person elected president of the National Bar Association, the country’s oldest and largest organization of Black attorneys, Williams spent much of his life and career in Newark, N.J., practicing law as a public servant and also a private attorney, as well as serving the community in various capacities (including as the chairman of the celebration commemorating the city’s 350th anniversary). He was the founding director of the Abbott Leadership Institute at Rutgers University–Newark and is currently the producer of Rise Up Newark, a digital portrayal of the Black empowerment experience, and host of the podcast Everything’s Political. He is also a senior consultant with the Center for Education and Juvenile Justice, Inc., and is co-directing a documentary on Black music in Newark called Can’t You Hear that Sound?. Williams’ life has been chronicled in the Civil Rights History Project, a collaborative initiative of the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. He earned a bachelor of arts from Amherst and juris doctorate from Yale Law School.
About Amherst College
Amherst College prepares students to use ideas to make a difference in the world. Since its founding in 1821 in Western Massachusetts, Amherst has demonstrated steadfast confidence in the value of the liberal arts and the importance of critical thinking. Today, its financial aid program is among the most substantial in the nation, and its student body is among the most diverse. Small classes, an open curriculum and a singular focus on undergraduate education ensure that leading scholars engage daily with talented, curious students, equipping them for leadership in an increasingly global and complex world.