Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus and Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist Dave Barry will headline Elon University’s two Convocation ceremonies during the 2011-2012 academic year.
Fall Convocation & the Baird Pulitzer Prize Lecture
Dave Barry, whose nationally syndicated column for the Miami Herald won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, visits campus Oct. 11 as the keynote speaker for Fall Convocation, which will also serve as the 2011 Baird Pulitzer Prize Lecture.
More than 500 papers carried his column before he ended the weekly feature in 2005, though he continues to blog and write occasional articles for the newspaper in addition to his annual gift guide and Year in Review features.
Born and raised in Aramonk, N.Y., Barry graduated in 1969 from Haverford College. He spent his first years out of school as a reporter for the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pa., before joining a consulting firm that assisted businessmen and women with their writing. A 1981 guest column in the Philadelphia Inquirer caught the eye of a Sunday magazine editor in Miami, and by 1983, Barry had relocated to South Florida.
Barry spent the next 25 years writing for the Miami Herald. He has authored or contributed to dozens of books and compilations, and the CBS comedy “Dave’s World” in the mid 1990s was based on two of his works. His book Big Trouble was made into a 2002 major motion picture starring Tim Allen and Rene Russo.
Pulitzer Prize speakers in past years at Elon have included two-time guest David McCullough, George Will, Anna Quindlen, Thomas Friedman and David Halberstam. The Pulitzer Prizes, awarded each year since 1917, are the nation’s most prestigious awards in journalism and the liberal arts.
The Baird Pulitzer Prize Lecture Series was made possible in 2001 with an endowed gift from James H. and Jane M. Baird of Burlington, N.C., who were the first presidents of the Elon Parents Council. Their son, Macon, is a 1987 Elon graduate and their son-in-law, Michael Hill, earned his Elon degree in 1989.
Convocation for Honors
A pioneer of microcredit in developing nations, Muhammad Yunus will be the featured speaker at Convocation for Honors on April 3, 2012. The founder of Grameen Bank has helped provide credit to 5.6 million people in his native Bangladesh.
Yunus and the Grameen Bank received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for their efforts to combat poverty via small loans that require no collateral from the rural poor, especially women, who use the funds for self-employment and to establish credit. Since then, Yunus has been one of the world’s leading pioneers for social business, a way to “use the creative vibrancy of business to tackle social problems” that include poverty, pollution, a lack of education and inadequate health care.
Yunus’ book, Creating a World Without Poverty, has been selected as the 2011-2012 Common Reading at Elon. In addition to his Convocation remarks, Yunus has been selected to receive the Elon University Medal for Entrepreneurial Leadership.
An economist by training, Yunus traveled to the United States on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1965 and earned his doctorate from Vanderbilt University five years later. He taught briefly at Middle Tennessee State University before returning to Bangladesh where, in addition to founding Grameen Bank, he served on the economics faculty for nearly two decades at Chittagong University.
Yunus has received several American and international honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the World Food Prize, and has received more than two dozen honorary degrees. He currently serves on boards of advisors and boards of directors for numerous international organizations.
The Convocation for Honors each spring serves as an event to recognize Dean’s List and President’s List students, the faculty, graduate students, the upcoming graduating class and members of the Elon Society, the premier annual giving group at Elon. Keynote speakers in recent years have included New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Tony Award-winning Broadway director and producer Hal Prince.
Both fall and spring convocations will be open to the public with the purchase of a ticket through the university Box Office. The events are free to students, faculty, staff and employee spouses with a valid Elon ID.