Bio Test

Michael Beschloss, Honorary Doctor of Letters and 2026 Commencement Speaker

Historian, scholar of leadership, author
News and Documentary Emmy Award, 2005

Michael Beschloss is an award-winning historian, scholar of leadership, and author whose most recent book, Presidents of War: The Epic Story, from 1807 to Modern Times, was a New York Times bestseller published in 2018.

Beschloss’s first book, Kennedy and Roosevelt, was published when he was 24 years old and originated as his senior honors thesis at Williams College. It was written under the supervision of renowned scholar James MacGregor Burns, with whom Beschloss maintained a lifelong friendship.

Beschloss is also the author of Presidential Courage, The Conquerors, and The Crisis Years, among others, and he was the first to explore the private tapes made by President Lyndon Johnson. He chronicled them in two volumes, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963–1964, and Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson's Secret White House Tapes, 1964–1965.

Born in Chicago, Beschloss is an alumnus of Phillips Academy (Andover), Williams College, where he graduated with highest honors in political science, and the Harvard Business School, where he studied leadership. He serves as NBC News Presidential Historian and as a PBS contributor and has held appointments in history at the Smithsonian Institution, St. Antony’s College (Oxford) and the Harvard Russian Research Center. 

Beschloss has served on the boards of the National Archives Foundation, the White House Historical Association, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, and the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships.

Beschloss has received honorary degrees from Lafayette College and Williams College, among others. He has received the National Archives Foundation’s annual Records of Achievement Award, the Order of Lincoln from the State of Illinois (the state’s highest award), the Founders Award of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Ambassador Book Award, and the Harry S. Truman Public Service Award. In addition, he won an Emmy Award for his role in the 2004 Discovery Channel TV series “Decisions That Shook the World,” for which he served as chief scholar and host.

Carolyn Bertozzi, Honorary Doctor of Sciences

Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology and Radiology (by courtesy), Stanford University
Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2022

Carolyn Bertozzi is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology and Radiology (by courtesy) at Stanford University, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She founded the field of bioorthogonal chemistry, for which she shared the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Bertozzi's research interests span the disciplines of chemistry and biology with an emphasis on developing new therapeutic modalities that target disease-related glycobiology. Her group has invented targeted enzyme therapeutics for immune oncology, Lysosome Targeting Chimeras (LYTACs) for extracellular targeted protein degradation, antibody-lectin chimeras (AbLecs) for therapeutic applications, and site-specific bioconjugation methods for synthesis of next-gen antibody-drug conjugates.  Bertozzi’s lab has also developed glycoproteomics technologies for disease biomarker discovery, point-of-care diagnostics for tuberculosis, and ultrasensitive antibody detection methods that are being used to diagnose early onset diabetes and viral infections. Her academic work has launched 12 co-founded biotechnology companies.

Bertozzi has been recognized with many honors and awards.  She is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Inventors, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In addition to the Nobel Prize, she received the Welch Award in Chemistry, Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics, Lemelson-MIT Prize, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.  She received the 2024 Priestley Medal from the American Chemical Society.

She completed her undergraduate degree in chemistry from Harvard University in 1988 and her PhD in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1993. After completing postdoctoral work in cellular immunology at the University of California, San Francisco, Bertozzi joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1996. In June 2015, she joined the faculty at Stanford University coincident with the launch of Stanford's Sarafan ChEM-H Institute.

James Corner, Honorary Doctor of Arts

Professor Emeritus of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism, University of Pennsylvania
Founding Partner, Field Operations

James Corner is a world-renowned landscape architect, urban designer, educator, and author who has revolutionized the concept of public spaces, bringing people together to enjoy them in cities around the world. He is best known for creating New York’s High Line, a once-abandoned elevated railway that he transformed into an urban promenade and garden. Drawing some eight million visitors each year, the High Line has inspired a global trend of repurposing infrastructure. Some of Corner’s other projects include Seattle’s Central Waterfront; San Francisco’s Presidio Tunneltops; Chicago’s Navy Pier; and Hong Kong’s Victoria Dockside.

Corner is the Founding Partner of Field Operations, a global design studio based in New York City, devoted to the design of dynamic urban public spaces and environments.

His work has been recognized with the prestigious International Federation of Landscape Architects’ Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award for Excellence (2024); the ASLA National Design Medal (2023); the Richard Neutra Award for Design Excellence (2023); the American Academy of Arts & Letters Award in Architecture (2011); and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award (2010), among many others.

A distinguished theorist and writer, Corner’s seminal books include The High Line: Foreseen/Unforeseen (Phaidon, 2015); The Landscape Imagination (Princeton, 2014), and Taking Measures Across the American Landscape (Yale, 1996). 

His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Royal Society of Art, London; and the Venice Biennale.

Corner is Professor Emeritus of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design, where he served on the faculty beginning in 1990, and as Professor and Chairman from 2000-2013. He sits on the Board of the Urban Design Forum, the Government Advisory Board of Shenzhen, and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Corner earned a BA with first class honors from Manchester Metropolitan University, and an MLA and Urban Design Certificate from the University of Pennsylvania.

Claudia Goldin, Honorary Doctor of Laws

Samuel W. Morris University Professor and Henry Lee Professor of Economics, Harvard University
Nobel Prize in Economics, 2023

Claudia Goldin is the Samuel W. Morris University Professor and Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University. She was awarded the 2023 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences “for having advanced our understanding of women's labour market outcomes.” An economic historian and a labor economist, Goldin was the director of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Development of the American Economy program from 1989 to 2017 and is currently co-director of the NBER Gender in the Economy group. 

Most of Goldin’s research interprets the present through the lens of the past and explores the origins of issues of current concern including economic inequality, the role of technological change, women’s rights, the gender gap in earnings, immigration, and higher education. She is the author of many books including: Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women, The Race between Education and Technology, and Career & Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity. 

Goldin was the President of the American Economic Association and of the Economic History Association. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and a fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Society of Labor Economists. Goldin received the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics in 2020 and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in 2019. She enjoys teaching students at all levels and has received many teaching awards.

Originally from the Bronx, Goldin received her BA from Cornell University and her PhD from the University of Chicago. She is an outdoor enthusiast and a bird-watcher, and trained her late Golden Retriever, Pika, to several performance scenting titles.

Ann Hobson Pilot, Honorary Doctor of Music

Classical harpist, educator, recording artist
Principal harpist, Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1980-2009

Ann Hobson Pilot is an internationally renowned harpist who played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) for 40 years. A Philadelphia native, Pilot studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music before joining the BSO in 1969 and becoming its principal harpist in 1980. She was the BSO’s first Black principal player, and the first female Black principal at any major orchestra.

Pilot has performed with many American orchestras as soloist, as well as with orchestras in Europe, New Zealand, South Africa, and Argentina. In 1997, she traveled to South Africa to record a video documentary, “A Musical Journey,” sponsored by the Museum of Afro-American History and public radio station WGBH. While in South Africa, Pilot performed with the National Symphony Orchestra. Her recordings include both solo and ensemble performances.

The story of Pilot’s life and her contributions is told in “A Harpist’s Legacy, Ann Hobson Pilot and the Sound of Change,” a documentary that has aired on PBS stations nationwide.

A longtime teacher and mentor, Pilot retired from the faculties of Boston University and The New England Conservatory of Music, where she taught from 1973 to 2013. She retired in 2021 as the Director of the Young Artists Harp Program for the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. 

Among her many awards, Pilot received the prestigious Gold Baton from the League of American Orchestras in 2016.

After retiring from the BSO in 2009, Pilot returned to the stage as a soloist, opening the seasons of the BSO and Carnegie Hall with the premiere of “On Willows and Birches, Concerto for Harp and Orchestra,” written for her by legendary composer John Williams, who received an honorary degree from Penn in 2021.