Veritas, Vol. 42, No. 08, May 2000

              Seven honorary degrees to be awarded at commencement
One has fought for justice for all. Another helped save millions of lives by giving away an anti-worm medicine to Third World countries.
Still another created an art form all its own. And four others blazed trails in everything from public service and economics to business and humanities.
But while their backgrounds are as diverse as their personalities, on Friday, May 12, on the University Green, these accomplished individuals will come together to share a common distinction: as honorary-degree recipients at the annual commencement ceremony. P. Roy Vagelos, an internationally recognized leader in the field of medicine and one of the seven recipients, will deliver the keynote speech at the ceremony—the first commencement of the new millennium. The historic ceremony will be shown as a live webcast on the University’s redesigned web site, www.miami.edu/wvum.
The honorary degree recipients are as follows:
Manuel Jorge Cutillas While Manuel Jorge Cutillas is internationally recognized for transforming the Bacardi company into the fifth largest spirits company in the world, he also is responsible for breathing a new spirit of social responsibility into the company, from global environmental preservation and a strong campaign of moderation to an unyielding commitment to quality. In recognition of these contributions, Cutillas is being awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Business Administration.
Bom in Cuba nearly 70 years ago, Cutillas is the great-great grandson of the legendary Don Facundo Bacardi, who founded the Bacardi company in Cuba in 1862. While the Bacardi company prospered for nearly 100 years, in 1960 Fidel Castro confiscated the firm and its manufacturing plant in Cuba, and Cutillas and his family were forced to flee into exile.
During the 1960s, while the company was rebuilding its business, Cutillas became the plant superintendent of Bacardi & Company Limited, and was responsible for developing and implementing the company’s trademark method of rum-making. From the 1970s through the 1990s, Cutillas’ insightful leadership was the catalyst for continued growth for his firm, and the fuel for his extraordinary career advancement.
Drew S. Days III A staunch defender of civil rights, a Peace Corps alumnus and international advocate of human rights, and noted law professor,
Drew S. Days III is one of the nation’s leading voices for equality. He is receiving the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws for his unwavering commitment to ensuring justice for all.
Currently the Alfred M. Rankin Professor of Law at Yale University,
Days began his career at Yale nearly 40 years ago when he earned his law degree in 1966. Since then, his career has been nothing short of astounding. As a lawyer during the 1970s for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, he was responsible for federal trial and appellate litigation in some of the most intensely controversial issues of the era, including school desegregation, police misconduct, prisoners’ rights, and employment discrimination.
In 1977 he was named assistant attorney general for civil rights for the U.S. Department of Justice by then-President Jimmy Carter. In January of 1981 he joined the faculty of the Yale University School of Law, where he received his tenure in 1986. And in 1993, he was nominated by President Clinton and confirmed by the Senate as the solicitor general of the United States—the federal government’s lawyer before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Dorothy Jenkins Fields A lyric voice for the black history of South Florida, Dorothy Jenkins Fields has devoted her life to preserving the heritage of the African-American community and raising awareness of African-American history to a national level. She is responsible for the establishment of Miami’s Black Archives, the designation and restoration of the landmark Lyric Theater and other historic sites, the creation of the Black Heritage Trail, and the designation of the Historic Over-town Folklife Village as a National Trust “Main Street” community. Fields is being awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humanities for her unprecedented research and documentation of African-American history.
A professional teacher and educator for Miami-Dade County Public Schools for more than 30 years, Fields began her career in 1964 after graduating from Spelman College. In 1974, in preparation for the nation’s bicentennial, she began a search for curriculum materials on the black experience in South Florida. When she was unable to find any information about South Florida’s black history in any school or public
library, she established The Black Archives, a nonprofit manuscript and photographic repository for the legacies of Miami’s black community. Today, The Black Archives, History & Research Foundation of South Florida, Inc., is a national resource for this history of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Connie Mack Considered one of the most popular senators in the nation, both among his peers and among his constituents, United States Senator Connie Mack is the first Republican in Florida history to be reelected to the Senate for a second term. He currently serves as the Republican Conference Chairman for the 106th Congress, making him the third-highest ranking member of the Senate Republican leadership. In recognition of his distinguished record, Mack is receiving the honorary degree of Doctor of Public Service.
While Mack, his wife, and his daughter have all survived bouts with cancer, they have lost several of their loved ones to the disease. As a result, he has become a national advocate for promoting early cancer detection and furthering federal support of medical research. Among other projects, Mack was instrumental in gaining a $2 billion increase for research funding for the National Institutes of Health—the largest increase in NIH history.
Robert A. Mundell Robert A. Mundell is a Nobel laureate who has had far-reaching influence in both practical and academic economics throughout the world. A brilliant economist, he established the foundation for much of the world’s monetary and fiscal policies, while his theories constitute the core knowledge in the teaching of international macroeconomics. For his far-reaching innovations in the global economy, Mundell is receiving the honorary degree of Doctor of Economics.
Mundell was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1999 “for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas.” Mundell, age 66, holds the C. Lowell Harriss Professorship of Economics at Columbia University.
Mundell is known as the father of the theory of optimum currency areas, and prepared one of the first plans for a
common currency in Europe. He is the cofounder of supply-side economics and played a crucial, behind-the-scenes role during U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s tenure that led to the development of “Reagan-omics.”
Frank Stella “Some people have the ability to outperform themselves. That’s what we call greatness,” says Frank Stella, an American artist who was christened “the father of minimalism” at the young age of 23. One of the most influential painters of the 20th century, Stella is being awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts.
An extraordinary genius who broke the boundaries between painting and sculpture,
Stella became a leader in the world of modern art after his first professional exhibit in I960. His style was so unusual, so captivating, so challenging, that a new vocabulary had to be created to define it.
His style became known as “nonrelational painting” of the School of Post-Painterly Abstraction. He began a trend of painting on canvases that were anything but square, creating patterns of regularly spaced lines and precise geometric forms that were free-drawn using no measuring tools. He abolished three-dimensional imagery by eliminating the relationship between the painting and its “ground” or canvas, until the entire painting itself was seen as a single object.
P. Roy Vagelos An internationally known leader in the field of medicine,
P. Roy Vagelos for almost a decade headed Merck & Co., Inc., one of the largest and most profitable pharmaceutical firms in the world. A scientist, physician, as well as a visionary and
highly successful
JL.	^	business execu-
tive, Vagelos has devoted his career 1 m	to furthering bio-
medical research and medical dis-coveries in health care. Vagelos is
receiving the honorary degree of Doctor of Science for his movement and compassion to improve the health of the world at large and his commitment to promoting scientific research and education.
By giving away a Merck-developed anti-worm medicine to poverty-stricken inhabitants of underdeveloped countries, Vagelos saved millions of lives in Africa, Asia, and Latin America from onchocerciasis, a devastating disease that leads to blindness in adult life.