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TUESDAY, May 23, 2017
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news
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the justice
COMMENCEMENT 2017
2017
HONORARY DEGREE RECIPIENTS
COMMENCEMEN fellow graduates and “making it CONTINUED FROM 1
LISA LYNCH IR IH M KH
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University Provost Lisa Lynch serves as the University’s chief academic officer as well as the Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy. Lynch previously served as interim University president from July 2015 through June 2016 and prior to that was the dean of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Outside academia, Lynch worked as chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor and as the chair of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. As an undergraduate, she studied economics and political science at Wellesley College, and she earned her Master’s degree and Ph.D. in economics at the London School of Economics, according to her profile on the Brandeis website.
LESLIE LAMPORT IR IH M
After studying mathematics and earning two graduate degrees from Brandeis, computer scientist Leslie Lamport MA ’63 Ph.D.’72 became known as “the father of principled distributed computing.” In 2013, Lamport won the A.M. Turing Award for “fundamental contributions to the theory and practice of distributed and concurrent systems,” according to the A.M. Turing website. Lamport also wrote the highly cited research paper titled “Time, Clocks and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System,” which he published in 1978.
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we are in 2017, watching ‘never again’ turn into to ‘again and again,’ and watching that wonderful democratic consensus fragment, shattered by narcissistic populism, an unhealthy tolerance for intolerance, a cavalier indifference to equality, a deliberate amnesia about the instruments and values of democracy, and a shocking disrespect for the borders between power and its independent adjudicators like the press and the courts,” she said. And yet, she said, “The phoenix that rose from the ashes of Auschwitz was justice. Beautiful, democratic, tolerant, compassionate justice.” Staying attuned to injustice was a theme University President Ronald Liebowitz also
touched on in his remarks counted the University’s his sectarian, quota-less school people of all creeds, adding th “must remain a defining c this University.” In one of the lighter mome mencement exercises, unde dent speaker Mercedes Hall undergraduate career to a b thanking her fellow graduate shot … [and] making it to th game.” “We play hard every gam a little bit better and with a when we play at home. At hom feated. … We all play for the s said, adding, “There is one pl
Good luck, C
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ROSALIE SILBERMAN ABELLA IR IH M
Rosalie Silberman Abella is a Canadian Supreme Court justice and renowned expert on human-rights law who contributed to the creation of the concept of “employment equity.” After receiving a Bachelor of Law from the University of Toronto, Abella practiced civil and criminal law from 1972 through 1976. She then became a jurist on the Ontario Family Court at age 29, the youngest of anyone appointed to Canada’s judiciary. Abella was also the first pregnant person appointed to the courts. Later, in 2004, Abella became the first Jewish woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada. In addition to her work on the judiciary, Abella has written more than 90 articles and contributed to four books.
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DEVAL PATRICK Deval Patrick is chair of the advisory board of Our Generation Speaks, a fellowship program designed to use entrepreneurship to foster a better rapport between Israelis and Palestinians. The program partners with Brandeis and MassChallenge to work with young Israeli and Palestinian leaders to create jobs and attempt to improve relations between the two communities. Prior to his work at Our Generation Speaks, Patrick was the first African-American governor of Massachusetts and was elected to two terms, serving from 2007 to 2015. Patrick’s education includes Milton Academy, Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
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MIHIR KHANNA/the Justice
FINAL GAME: Mercedes Briana Hall ’17 delivered a ball-court-themed student address, congratulating her Class of 2017 teammates.
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BARRY SHRAGE IR IH M
Barry Shrage has served since 1987 as the president of Combined Jewish Philanthropies, which “focuses on developing Jewish education and engaging future generations, [as well as] building connections to Israel,” according to an April 4 Brandeis press release. Under Shrage’s leadership, the organization has invested $1.1 million in the Jewish community not only in Greater Boston but also in the larger world. In response to the 2008 recession, Shrage also contributed to the development of CJP’s Economic Response, which aimed to provide resources “to meet the needs of the Boston area’s most vulnerable,” according to the same press release.
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—Amber Miles CREATIVE COMMONS AND NATALIA WIATER/the Justice