ETHICIST TO ADDRESS WESLEYAN'S 170TH COMMENCEMENT

Super Bowl Champion Coach to Be Honored

Philosopher Martha Nussbaum will deliver the 2002 Commencement address at Wesleyan University on Sunday, May 26. Wesleyan will award honorary degrees to Nussbaum, Morehouse College President Walter E. Massey, and Wesleyan Trustee Emeritus Stuart Silloway.

The ceremony will include the presentation of Wesleyan's Baldwin Medal to New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, a 1975 graduate, who coached his team to a Super Bowl victory in February. The medal is the highest honor awarded by the alumni body for service to the university and to the public interest.

Honorary Degrees

Martha Nussbaum
Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She taught ethics and classics at Harvard and Brown universities before being offered her current appointment.

The author of 20 books, she has published on topics such as education, justice, patriotism and women's health. In her book Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, she supports an approach to liberal education she contends would make students "citizens of the world" who can think for themselves while being open to others' perspectives. Nussbaum argues that, for students to achieve the skills necessary to maintain democratic principles in the nation's multicultural society, universities need to offer a liberal education that doesn't focus only on what is important in the American tradition. She is currently completing a new book entitled Hiding from Humanity: Shame, Disgust and the Law.

Nussbaum is on sabbatical this year while holding an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship for Research. Her plans for the year include running a conference in India on globalization and ethics, giving a series of lectures in Pakistan, and delivering the Tanner Lectures at Australian National University in Canberra.

She also is the recipient of the 2002 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Education, a $200,000 prize that is one of the largest in education.

Walter E. Massey
Massey is the ninth president of Morehouse College -- the nation's only historically black, all-male, four year, liberal arts institution -- and a 1958 graduate of the college. He has held administrative and academic positions including provost and senior vice president of academic affairs at the University of California; vice president for research at the University of Chicago and director of the Argonne National Laboratory, and dean of the college and full professor at Brown University.

Massey is the former director of the National Science Foundation, a position to which he was appointed by former President George Bush in 1990. A physicist, he studied quantum solids and liquids to analyze their properties at very low temperatures. Massey has served as the chairman and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the vice president of the American Physical Society, and as a member of the National Science Board and the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. In December, President George W. Bush appointed Massey to serve on the Presidential Council on Science and Technology.

Stuart Silloway
Silloway, who graduated from Wesleyan in 1929, started his career in corporate finance and management as a municipal analyst with the Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York in 1933. He worked for the firm for 23 years, becoming vice president and manager in 1948. He went on to become president of Pacific Northwest Pipeline Corporation (1956-1958), president of Harriman Ripley & Co., Inc. (1958-1963), and a partner of Brooks Harvey & Co. (1963-1964). In 1964, he became president and chief executive officer of Investors Diversified Services, Inc., where he remained until his retirement in 1971.

Silloway served on many corporate boards, including IDS Life Insurance Company, Investors Syndicate of America, Jostens, Inc., Newmont Mining Corp., Newmont Oil Corp. and National Data Communications.

In the 1950s Silloway was co-architect with Board Chair Stuart Hedden of the strategy to purchase for Wesleyan the Educational Press that produced the Weekly Reader. He served on the Wesleyan Board of Trustees for 22 years (from 1946 to 1968) and was vice-president of the Board in 1961-62. He was named Trustee Emeritus in 1997. In 1974, he was honored with Wesleyan's Distinguished Alumnus Award.

Baldwin Medal
Bill Belichick earned his bachelor's degree in economics at Wesleyan in 1975. Now in his 27th season in the NFL, Belichick has earned a reputation for being one of the league's elite game strategists whose defensive game plans have consistently been credited for defusing some of the league's most potent offenses. Since 1981, nine of his teams have qualified for the playoffs, claiming three Super Bowl titles, four conference titles, and six division titles. He became head coach of the Patriots in 2000.

Belichick and his wife, Debby, have been long-time advocates and contributors to local charities. The two recently established the Bill and Debby Belichick Scholarship, an annual stipend awarded to an Annapolis High School senior for academic and athletic achievement. A foundation they established in Cleveland raised over $125,000 for the Zelma George Home, a shelter for the homeless women and children. Since returning to New England, Belichick has supported various community functions, including the March of Dimes Walk America and the Rodman Ride for Kids. Belichick has participated in a number of seminars for Wesleyan, both on campus and at alumni functions, earning a Distinguished Alumni Award in 1987.

The annual Baldwin Medal pays tribute to the late Judge Raymond E. Baldwin of Wesleyan's Class of 1916. Baldwin was the only man to have held the offices of Connecticut governor, U.S. senator and chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court.

The May 26 Commencement ceremony will begin at 10:45 a.m. with a traditional academic procession from Foss Hill to Andrus Field in the center of the Wesleyan campus. The platform ceremony will begin at 11 a.m.