Hamilton College Announces Honorary Degree Recipients

Hamilton College has announced the names of four people who will be awarded honorary degrees at the college's 192nd commencement on Sunday, May 23.

They are Hamilton College graduate and trustee Kevin Kennedy '70; Margaret Miles, Emerita Professor of Historical Theology, The Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, Calif.; Hamilton graduate and Tony Award-winning playwright Richard Nelson '72; and Joseph Wilder, jazz trumpeter. Delaware Congressman Mike Castle, a 1961 graduate of Hamilton who will give the Commencement address, received an honorary degree from the college in 1987.

Kevin Kennedy '70

A 1970 graduate of Hamilton College, Kennedy has been a managing director of Goldman Sachs & Co., a leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm, since 1996. He has headed the Human Capital Management Division at the firm since August 2001. Kennedy was the chairman of Hamilton's board of trustees from 1994-2002, and is currently a life trustee of the college. He first served on Hamilton's board as an alumni trustee from 1986-1990, and as a charter trustee from 1990-2002. Kennedy also serves as a managing director of the Metropolitan Opera and an honorary trustee of the Chewonki Foundation. He received his MBA from Harvard University.

During his tenure as Hamilton's board chairman, Kennedy oversaw substantial improvements to the college. Most notable are the 1995 Residential Life Decision, the 2000 Strategic Plan, marked progress in the college's admission program, significant upgrades to campus facilities, and a highly successful New Century Campaign.

Kennedy joined Goldman Sachs in 1974, became a partner in 1984 and served as head of corporate finance from 1988 until 1994. He then became head of the Americas Group, and in 1999, he joined the executive office to strengthen efforts to manage the careers of the firm's managing directors and to develop future leadership of Goldman Sachs. Kennedy and his wife, Karen, a pediatrician in New York, have two grown children.

Margaret R. Miles

Miles, who will deliver Hamilton's baccalaureate address on Saturday, May 22, is Emerita Professor of Historical Theology at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, Calif. She was previously dean and vice president for academic affairs and Dillenberger Professor of Historical Theology from 1996-2001. Previously she was Bussey Professor of Historical Theology at Harvard Divinity School, where she had also served as chair of the department of theology.

Miles is the author of several books, including the forthcoming The Word Made Flesh: A History of Christian Thought (Blackwell, 2004); Plotinus on Body and Beauty: Society, Philosophy and Religion in Third Century Rome (Blackwell, 1999); Seeing and Believing: Religion and Values in the Movies (Beacon Press, 1996); and Reading For Life: Beauty, Pluralism and Responsibility (Continuum, 1997). Her research interests include Augustine, gender studies, cultural studies and late antiquity. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1982-1983 and received an NEH grant in 1982. Miles earned a Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union and master's and bachelor's degrees from San Francisco State University. She is married to the Rev. Dr. Owen C. Thomas, a 1944 graduate of Hamilton.

Richard Nelson '72

A 1972 graduate of Hamilton, playwright Richard Nelson won a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for James Joyce's The Dead in 2000. That musical was also honored with the Lucille Lortel Award, Best Musical, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, Best Musical. In 1999 Nelson received the Olivier Award for Best Play for Good Night Children Everywhere; he received Obie Awards for The Vienna Notes and for programming for The BAM Theatre Company. Nelson is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1983) and Lila Wallace Readers' Digest Writers Award, (1991-93).
Nelson's plays include Rodney's Wife (forthcoming, 2004), at Playwrights Horizons, New York City; My Life With Albertine, which he also directs, with Ricky Ian Gordon, Playwrights Horizon; Franny's Way; Madame Melville; and The General From America, Royal Shakespeare Company, Alley Theatre & Theatre for a New Audience, New York City, the last two productions which he also directed.

Nelson served as literary manager at the Brooklyn Academy Music Theater Co. from 1979-81; associate director of the Goodman Theater in Chicago, 1980-1983; and dramaturg for Tyrone Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, 1981-82.

Joseph Wilder

photo by Ed Berger

Jazz trumpeter Joseph Wilder followed his father's footsteps into the music business and studied trumpet at the Curtis Institute. He was working professionally by the age of 20 then spent three years in the Marine Corps, first in special weapons, later as a bandmaster. During the 1940s and 50s, Wilder performed with a lengthy list of top name band leaders including Erskine Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Noble Sissle and Count Basie. He spent 16 years as a member of the ABC music staff and during this period he continued to perform both jazz and as a guest with the New York Philharmonic. Wilder worked steadily through the 1970s and 80s in film and television and in the orchestra pit for top Broadway shows. He has been a member of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. A longtime resident of New York City, Wilder, at age 82, continues to perform and is a valued guest at jazz events across the country, including Hamilton College's FallComing jazz event. Wilder is an avid and accomplished photographer.