Commencement to Honor Internationally Renowned Figures
Three outstanding individuals will receive honorary doctoral degrees at the University’s 63rd Commencement ceremony on Tuesday, May 16, at 10 a.m., at the Continental Airlines Arena, East Rutherford, N.J. They are Kwame Anthony Appiah (humane letters), Ibrahim Agboola Gambari (humane letters) and Kuslima Shogen (science).
Kwame Anthony Appiah, British-born American philosopher, novelist and scholar of African and African-American studies, is best known for his contribution to political philosophy, moral psychology and the philosophy of culture. Appiah has been called “our postmodern Socrates.” Born in London, his mother came from the English landed gentry and his father was a Ghanaian statesman. Appiah attended primary school in Kumasi until the ruler of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, imprisoned his father.
He earned his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees at Cambridge University. As an undergraduate, he met Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who became his collaborator on a number of projects, including the Amistad series of critical anthologies of major African-American writers. Appiah has held academic appointments at Yale, Cornell, Duke and Harvard and is now the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. A prolific writer, Appiah’s book In My Father’s House (1992) focused on Africa’s struggle for self-definition in a world dominated by Western values.
Ibrahim Agboola Gambari, United Nations under-secretary-general for political affairs, holds the second most influential and powerful position in the U.N. Secretariat. Prior to joining the Secretariat in 1999, Gambari was the longest serving ambassador/permanent representative of Nigeria to the United Nations. He chaired the U.N. Special Committee Against Apartheid, which successfully saw the demise of that injustice and the establishment of democratic rule in South Africa. In 2002–03, Gambari served as special representative of the secretary-general and head of the United Nations Mission to Angola.
He earned a BSc (economics) degree in political science from the London School of Economics, and an MA and PhD from Columbia University, N.Y.C. Gambari was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., and a resident scholar with the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Italy. In November 2003, he spoke on “African Challenges at the Turn of the 21st Century” at Fairleigh Dickinson as part of the United Nations Pathways Lecture Series.
Kuslima Shogen, CEO/chairman of the board/director of the Alfacell Corporation, BS’74, MS’76 (Ruth), is an internationally recognized leader in ribonuclease-based therapeutics. She formed Alphacell in 1981 to pursue research that she had initiated while a biology student in the University Honors Program at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Shogen was named to the first annual PharmaVOICE 100 List of the Most Inspiring People. In 1998, she was inducted into The PINNACLE, one of the highest honors Fairleigh Dickinson bestows on its alumni.
Alfacell Corporation is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of novel therapeutics for cancer, using its proprietary ribonuclease (RNase) technology platform. ONCONASE(R) (ranpirnase), Alfacell’s lead investigational drug candidate, has been successfully administered to more than 850 patients with a variety of solid tumors, and is currently being evaluated in a Phase IIIb trial for malignant mesothelioma (MM) and a Phase I/II trial in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
In January 2006, Tommy Thompson, former U.S. secretary of health and human services, joined Alfacell Corporation as special adviser. Thompson called the company “unwavering” in its commitment to developing potential breakthroughs in the treatment of cancer.
For more details about Commencement see the April/May issue of Inside FDU on the Web and go to http://view.fdu.edu/default.aspx?id=751 .
top of this page table of contents for this issue
March 2006
| · | Commencement to Honor Internationally Renowned Figures |
| · | Middle States Update |
| · | Students Study in England, Spain, Switzerland |
| · | Grant Focuses on Burden/Twombly Archival Project |
| · | ‘Hot Topics’ is Hot! |
| · | Arts Critic Simon to Speak |
| · | Knights to Play in NIT |
| · | Rosalind Russell Film Series |
| · | New Members Chosen for Heritage Hall |
| · | FDU Press Publishes Nine New Books |
| · | Holiday and Time-off Schedule |
| · | Faculty/Staff — Update, Announcing, Welcome |
| · | College Happenings |
| · | Spotlight — Kohn, Petracco, Salzman, Tantral |
| · | This & That |
| · | Photo Stories — U.S. Secretary of Education Visits, Black History Month Events, Art on Exhibit. |
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Inside FDU on the Web is published by the Office of Communications and Marketing. Newsletter Staff: Carol Black, editor; Mary Ann Bautista, Mariellen Brown, Angelo Carfagna, Scott Giglio, Howard Gilman, Doug Hall, Gretchen Johnson, William Kennedy, Lillian Lukac, Rebecca Maxon, Art Petrosemolo, Michael Russo.