{"id":6186,"date":"2023-04-14T14:18:23","date_gmt":"2023-04-14T18:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/?p=6186"},"modified":"2023-05-24T15:57:13","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T19:57:13","slug":"j-drew-lanham-to-deliver-2023-bates-college-commencement-address-joined-by-fellow-honorands-michael-lewis-julieanna-richardson-and-shankar-vedantam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/2023\/04\/14\/j-drew-lanham-to-deliver-2023-bates-college-commencement-address-joined-by-fellow-honorands-michael-lewis-julieanna-richardson-and-shankar-vedantam\/","title":{"rendered":"J. Drew Lanham to deliver 2023 Commencement address"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>J. Drew Lanham, Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology at Clemson University, MacArthur Fellow, and author of <em>The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man\u2019s Love Affair with Nature<\/em>, will deliver the Bates College Commencement address on Sunday, May 28.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lanham, who will receive an honorary Doctor of Science degree, will be joined by three other honorary degree recipients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Michael Lewis, the award-winning author of such books as <em>The Big Short<\/em> and <em>Moneyball,<\/em> whose meticulously crafted narratives help us understand the forces that are shaping our world, will receive a Doctor of Letters degree.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Julieanna Richardson, the founder and executive director of The HistoryMakers, the preeminent archive of African American oral histories, housed in the Library of Congress, will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters degree.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Shankar Vedantam, the acclaimed journalist and bestselling author renowned for exploring the inner workings of our minds and the ways we make decisions for his <em>Hidden Brain <\/em>podcast and radio series, will receive a Doctor of Letters degree.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignwide size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1919\" height=\"960\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2023\/04\/2023-monitor-facebook-all-four-Recovered.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-152821\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/2023-monitor-facebook-all-four-Recovered.webp 1919w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/2023-monitor-facebook-all-four-Recovered-400x200.webp 400w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/2023-monitor-facebook-all-four-Recovered-900x450.webp 900w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/2023-monitor-facebook-all-four-Recovered-1536x768.webp 1536w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/2023-monitor-facebook-all-four-Recovered-200x100.webp 200w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/2023-monitor-facebook-all-four-Recovered-1200x600.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1919px) 100vw, 1919px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Clockwise from top left: Commencement speaker J. Drew Lanham and fellow honorands Michael Lewis, Shankar Vedantam, and Julieanna Richardson.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis year\u2019s class of honorary degree recipients embody the very best of the liberal arts \u2014 bringing to their work deep curiosity, rigorous inquiry, and sincere dedication to forging connections and creating something that serves the wider world,\u201d said President Clayton Spencer. \u201cWe are so pleased to be able to share their stories with our graduates and their families at Commencement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/\">This year\u2019s Commencement ceremony<\/a> begins at 10 a.m. and will be held outside, rain or shine, on the college\u2019s Historic Quad and available via livestream <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/commencement-2023\/watch-live-2023\/\">on the Bates College website<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/batescollege\/\">Bates College Facebook page<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">J. Drew Lanham<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>J. Drew Lanham is an ornithologist, wildlife ecologist, professor, and writer whose work builds connections between people and place. He is an advocate for the natural world and for direct human experience of nature, and often addresses the barriers Black Americans can face when seeking to claim this experience and find joy in wild spaces. His essay \u201c9 Rules for the Black Birdwatcher,\u201d published in <em>Orion<\/em> magazine in 2013, begins with: \u201c\u200b\u200bBe prepared to be confused with the other black birder,\u201d adding, \u201cyes, you will be called by his name at least half a dozen times by supposedly observant people who can distinguish gull molts in a blizzard.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1919\" height=\"1535\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2023\/04\/8x10_lanham_2022_hi-res-download_1.webp\" alt=\"J. Drew Lanham, Ornithologist, Naturalist, and Writer, 2022 MacArthur Fellow, Clemson, SC\" class=\"wp-image-152898\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/8x10_lanham_2022_hi-res-download_1.webp 1919w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/8x10_lanham_2022_hi-res-download_1-375x300.webp 375w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/8x10_lanham_2022_hi-res-download_1-900x720.webp 900w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/8x10_lanham_2022_hi-res-download_1-1536x1229.webp 1536w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/8x10_lanham_2022_hi-res-download_1-785x628.jpg 785w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1919px) 100vw, 1919px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">J. Drew Lanham, an ornithologist, wildlife ecologist, professor, and writer whose work builds connections between people and place, will deliver the Bates College Commencement address on May 28, 2023, and receive an honorary Doctor of Science degree. (Photograph \u00a9 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation \/ CC BY 4.0)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Raised in Edgefield County, South Carolina, Lanham received his undergraduate and master\u2019s degrees in zoology at Clemson University, then earned a doctorate in forest resources, also from Clemson. He holds an endowed chair as Alumni Distinguished Professor at Clemson and was named an Alumni Master Teacher in 2012. He serves on many conservation boards, including the American Birding Association, and is a member of the North American Association of Environmental Education. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2022 for &#8220;creating a new model of conservation that combines conservation science with personal, historical, and cultural narratives of nature.&#8221; Lanham\u2019s 2016 memoir, <em>The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man\u2019s Love Affair with Nature<\/em>, won the Southern Book Prize and the Reed Award from the Southern Environmental Law Center. Mixing prose with poetry, his first book was <em>Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts<\/em>, which began as a chapbook and was reissued in hardcover in 2021. Another book is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Michael Lewis<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>Writer Michael Lewis is a masterful storyteller and explainer. He has an uncommon talent for constructing narratives that are at once vividly specific and broadly compelling, from the inner workings of professional sports to the shortcomings of America\u2019s response to COVID-19. The author of many <em>New York Times<\/em> bestsellers, Lewis tells stories that reveal truths about ourselves and our society in the Information Age. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1370\" height=\"1919\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2023\/04\/2-lewismichael_ctabithasoren.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-152818\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/2-lewismichael_ctabithasoren.webp 1370w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/2-lewismichael_ctabithasoren-214x300.webp 214w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/2-lewismichael_ctabithasoren-643x900.webp 643w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/2-lewismichael_ctabithasoren-1097x1536.webp 1097w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/2-lewismichael_ctabithasoren-448x628.jpg 448w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1370px) 100vw, 1370px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Michael Lewis, the award-winning author of such bestselling books as <em>The Big Short<\/em> and <em>Moneyball,<\/em> whose meticulously crafted narratives help us understand the forces that are shaping our world, will receive an honorary Doctor of Letters degree at the Bates College Commencement on May 28, 2023. (Photograph by Tabitha Soren)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Moneyball<\/em> (2003) chronicles the data-driven efforts of baseball\u2019s Oakland A\u2019s to build a winning team on a shoestring budget, sparking important conversations about the role of data in sports and other industries. <em>The Blind Side <\/em>(2007) explores issues of race, class, meritocracy, and social mobility by documenting the evolution of one position on a football team, the left tackle, and focusing on the experience of one player, Michael Oher. <em>The Big Short<\/em> (2010), which won a <em>Los Angeles Times<\/em> Book Prize, follows the stories of individuals to explain the intricacies of the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. All three books were adapted into successful movies. Lewis has won multiple Gerald Loeb awards, considered business journalism\u2019s highest honor. His most recent book, <em>The Premonition<\/em> (2021), indicts the U.S. pandemic response, describing a \u201cbureaucratic disease of under-reaction [that] runs deep in America\u2019s fragmented, underfunded health system.\u201d Authentic, character driven, and meticulously researched, his books transport a reader \u201cthrough a winding road of anecdotes and eccentricities provided by the character or characters,\u201d writes the <em>Los Angeles Review of Books<\/em>, \u201call the while shearing and honing these stories for salience and readability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Julieanna Richardson<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2000, Julieanna Richardson interviewed Black radio executive Barry Mayo for the first interview for The HistoryMakers, which is now the nation\u2019s largest African American video oral history&nbsp;archive, an unprecedented collection of interviews, photos, and biographies telling the stories of more than 3,500 African Americans as well as the history of the U.S. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1540\" height=\"1917\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2023\/04\/2-Julieanna-Richardson-x-Timothy-Greenfield-Sanders.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-152807\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/2-Julieanna-Richardson-x-Timothy-Greenfield-Sanders.webp 1540w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/2-Julieanna-Richardson-x-Timothy-Greenfield-Sanders-241x300.webp 241w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/2-Julieanna-Richardson-x-Timothy-Greenfield-Sanders-723x900.webp 723w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/2-Julieanna-Richardson-x-Timothy-Greenfield-Sanders-1234x1536.webp 1234w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/2-Julieanna-Richardson-x-Timothy-Greenfield-Sanders-504x628.jpg 504w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1540px) 100vw, 1540px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Julieanna Richardson, founder and executive director of The HistoryMakers, the preeminent archive of African American oral histories, now housed in the Library of Congress, will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree at the Bates College Commencement on May 28, 2023. (Photograph by Timothy Greenfield Sanders)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Richardson\u2019s interest in African American oral history was inspired by her liberal arts education at Brandeis University, where an independent research project on the Harlem Renaissance led her to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.&nbsp;She earned a&nbsp;J.D. degree from Harvard Law School before working as a corporate attorney for the firm Jenner &amp; Block. She founded her own TV and video production company, started a regional home shopping channel, Shop Chicago, and served as C-SPAN\u2019s local production arm, before focusing on The HistoryMakers, now housed permanently at the Library of Congress and used for research and instruction by faculty and students at almost 200 colleges and universities.&nbsp;Richardson serves on the Honors Council of Lawyers for the Creative Arts and has received honorary doctorates from Howard University, Dominican University, and Brandeis; a <em>Black Enterprise Magazine<\/em> Legacy Award, its highest recognition of women\u2019s achievement, in 2014; and a Pioneer Award at the Heroes and Legends Awards in 2016. As the preeminent digital repository for the African American experience, The HistoryMakers, which includes numerous Bates alumni, honorands, and Martin Luther King Jr. Day speakers,&nbsp;is about \u201ctelling our story,\u201d said actor Danny Glover, \u201cand about correcting American history before it\u2019s too late.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Shankar Vedantam<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>Shankar Vedantam is an acclaimed journalist and bestselling author renowned for his podcast, <em>Hidden Brain<\/em>, which receives more than three million downloads each week. Vedantam uses science and storytelling to explore human behavior and decision making, with particular emphasis on the ways in which our decisions are influenced by factors of which we are un-self-aware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1439\" height=\"1919\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2023\/04\/Shankar-Vedantam-Credit-\u2014-Photo-By-Jamey-Stillings.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-152802\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/Shankar-Vedantam-Credit-\u2014-Photo-By-Jamey-Stillings.webp 1439w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/Shankar-Vedantam-Credit-\u2014-Photo-By-Jamey-Stillings-225x300.webp 225w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/Shankar-Vedantam-Credit-\u2014-Photo-By-Jamey-Stillings-675x900.webp 675w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/Shankar-Vedantam-Credit-\u2014-Photo-By-Jamey-Stillings-1152x1536.webp 1152w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/Shankar-Vedantam-Credit-\u2014-Photo-By-Jamey-Stillings-150x200.webp 150w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2023\/04\/Shankar-Vedantam-Credit-\u2014-Photo-By-Jamey-Stillings-471x628.jpg 471w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, 1439px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Shankar Vedantam, renowned for exploring the inner workings of our minds and the ways we make decisions for his <em>Hidden Brain <\/em>podcast and radio series, will receive an honorary Doctor of Letters degree at the Bates College Commencement on May 28, 2023. (Photograph by Jamie Stillings)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>He founded <em>Hidden Brain <\/em>while working at NPR as a social science correspondent. He previously served as a national correspondent for <em>The Washington Post<\/em>, authoring the \u201cDepartment of Human Behavior\u201d column. His books include an eponymously named <em>The Hidden Brain<\/em> (2010), <em>The Ghosts of Kashmir<\/em> (2005), and, as co-author with Bill Mesler, <em>Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain<\/em> (2021). Vedantam, who has received an Edward R. Murrow Award for outstanding achievement in journalism, holds a master\u2019s degree in journalism from Stanford University and has been a fellow of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. He has earned a World Health Organization Journalism Fellowship and a Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship, and has served on the advisory board of the Templeton\u2013Cambridge Fellowships in Science &amp; Religion and as a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Vedantam\u2019s 2022 TED Talk, \u201cYou Don\u2019t Actually Know What Your Future Self Wants,\u201d has more than 2.5 million views.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Author of <em>The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man\u2019s Love Affair with Nature<\/em>, Lanham is a MacArthur Fellowship\u2013winning ecologist, ornithologist, and inclusive wilderness advocate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":6188,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commencement-2023"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6186"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6246,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6186\/revisions\/6246"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}