Columbia Announces 2010 Honorary Degree Recipients

Columbia University will confer eight honorary degrees and recognize two winners of its alumni Medal for Excellence at commencement exercises on Tuesday, May 18. The Medal for Excellence is awarded annually to outstanding Columbia graduates under the age of 45. Honorees this year include celebrated artists, noted educators and distinguished scholars. They are: Bernard Bailyn, Doctor of Letters - The Adams University Professor and James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History Emeritus at Harvard, Bailyn is an historian of the American Revolution era and of the western hemisphere. His books include The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution , which won the Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize; The Peopling of British North America, an Introduction ; and Voyagers to the West , which also won a Pulitzer and many other awards. His book The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson won the National Book Award. A former Pitt Professor at Cambridge and honorary fellow of Christ's College, he has served as president of the American Historical Association.