HONORARY DEGREE RECIPIENT

Mary Schmidt Campbell, Doctorate of Humane Letters

Mary Schmidt Campbell is a renowned academic, author, and art historian. President emerita of Spelman College, she is dedicated to the education and global leadership of Black women and to expanding professional development opportunities for people of color in the arts. A former curator, Campbell began her career as executive director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, the country’s first accredited Black fine arts museum. She spent two decades as dean of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and also served as commissioner of New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs under two mayors.

In 2009, Barack Obama named her vice chair of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. In 2017, Campbell was appointed to serve as a member of the Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers in New York City. A tireless advocate for large and small arts organizations, she is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and currently sits on the boards of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Unity Technologies, and the American Museum of Natural History.

She is the author of a biography of Romare Bearden (2018) and is currently working on a forthcoming book on the life and work of the artist Sam Gilliam.

Campbell received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature from Swarthmore College, a M.A. in art history from Syracuse University, and a doctorate in humanities from Syracuse.

Frederick M. Lawrence, Doctorate of Humane Letters

Frederick M. Lawrence is an accomplished scholar, teacher, and civil rights attorney. One of the nation’s leading experts on civil rights, free expression, and bias crimes, Lawrence currently serves as the 10th secretary and CEO of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, the nation’s first and most prestigious honor society. In this role, he has focused on advocacy for the arts, humanities, and sciences; championed free expression, free inquiry, and academic freedom; and invigorated the Society’s 293 chapters and nearly 50 alumni associations. A distinguished lecturer at Georgetown University Law Center, he previously served as president of Brandeis University, dean of the George Washington University Law School, and visiting professor and senior research scholar at Yale Law School. He is the author of Punishing Hate: Bias Crimes Under American Law (1999), which examines bias-motivated violence and how such violence is punished in the United States. A frequent op-ed contributor to national and international news sources, Lawrence has testified before Congress concerning free expression on campus and on federal hate crime legislation. In the 1980s, he served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York where he became chief of the Civil Rights Unit.

A trustee of Beyond Conflict, he also serves on the board of directors of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, on the executive committee of the board of directors of the National Humanities Alliance, the editorial board of the Journal of College and University Law, and the Anti-Defamation League National Commission.

Lawrence received a bachelor’s degree from Williams College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and earned a law degree from Yale Law School.

Joowon Park

Joowon Park is an assistant professor of anthropology and an affiliate faculty member in Skidmore’s Asian Studies and International Affairs programs. Park is an expert on issues of citizenship and belonging, transnationalism, and the politics of humanitarianism. He is the author of Belonging in a House Divided (2022), a study of militarization and resettled North Koreans in the two Koreas. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and other organizations.

In addition to his work at Skidmore, Park serves as a member of South Korea’s Peaceful Unification Advisory Council and as a board member of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology.

Park received his Ph.D. from American University in 2015. Originally scheduled to come to Skidmore in the fall of that year, he took a leave of absence to fulfill two years of military service in South Korea and officially joined the Skidmore faculty in 2017.