Veritas, Vol. 43, No. 08, May 2001

              Veritas
May 2001
Volume 43 • Number 8
For the Faculty and Staff of the University of Miami
Eight honorary degrees to be awarded at commencement
Eight distinguished individuals—representing fields as diverse as music, law, architecture, science, and journalism—will receive honorary degrees at the 75th Annual Commencement exercises on May 11.
For the first time Edward T.
Foote II, as one of the honorary degree recipients, will deliver the commencement keynote speech, his last as University of Miami president after 20 years at the helm.
Helen J. Donath
Honorary Doctor of Music
A soprano soloist of the highest rank and grace, Helen J. Donath is one of the most recorded American singers of all time, and has had one of the most successful opera careers in American music history.
She began making professional concert and recital appearances in the United States while still in her teens, and at the young age of 22 won a prestigious contract to perform in Cologne, Germany. That was the first step in a career that would later bring her recognition as one of the best “German sopranos” in the world—for her ability to sing opera in the German language with a fluency and expressiveness exceeding even native speakers’.
During the past 30 years, Donath has performed throughout the world and has become widely known as a “Mozart specialist,” recording much of her repertory under the baton of renowned conductor Colin Davis.
Emilio Estefan, Jr.
Honorary Doctor of Music
A refugee from Cuba who arrived in Miami at the young age of 13, unable to speak a word of English, Emilio Estefan, Jr., is today the head of a $200 million corporation and one of the most influential “voices” in contemporary pop music. Fondly known as the “godfather of the Miami sound,” Estefan was the first to envision the fusion of Latin music and rhythm with English lyrics that has become the hottest trend in music since the invention of jazz.
In 1975, Estefan formed a group called the Miami Latin Boys that performed traditional Cuban music with a distinctive contemporary flavor. The group’s popularity quickly grew, and they changed their name to Miami Sound Machine, adding a female lead singer named Gloria Fajardo.
By 1985 their song Cowga became an international smash hit that transformed the group’s lead singer—now Gloria Estefan, having married Emilio
in 1978—into the first Latin female crossover superstar.
Gloria launched her solo career in 1989, while Emilio began exploring songwriting and producing, forming his own label company, Crescent Moon Productions.
Edward Thaddeus Foote II
Honorary Doctor of Laws
No president of a major U.S. research university today has served longer or with greater foresight than Edward T. “Tad” Foote II, the fourth president of the University of Miami.
For two decades he has led the University to unprecedented heights.
A graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center and a former dean of the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, Foote became president of the University of Miami in 1981. Upon his arrival, he introduced long-term strategic planning, leading to reducing the number of students while increasing the number of faculty. Under his leadership, the University’s research productivity has expanded dramatically. The University attracted $193.9 million in research and sponsored program support for last year.
During Foote’s tenure, the University added the schools of architecture, communication, and international studies. He also established the Dante B. Fascell North-South Center. In 1984 he launched a $400 million five-year fundraising campaign, which ended in 1990 with $517.5 million in commitments, including endowments for 45 chairs in various academic disciplines.
Foote will become President Emeritus and Chancellor of the University on June 1, 2001, serving as Chancellor until 2003-
Michael E. Graves
Honorary Doctor of Architecture
Michael E. Graves has so influenced the physical design of our world that his impact can be experienced in nearly every aspect of everyday life.
Among Graves’ most well-known projects is The Humana Building in Louisville, Kentucky, which was cited by Time magazine as one of the ten best buildings of the 1980s. Some of his other landmark buildings include Disney’s corporate headquarters in Burbank, California, and the headquarters of the Ministry of Culture in The Hague,
Netherlands. In Washington, D.C., Graves is currently designing the expansion and renovation of the U.S. Courthouse. Here in Florida, Graves is known for creating the whimsical Swan and Dolphin Hotels at Walt Disney
World in Orlando, and the visually stunning 1500 Ocean Drive condominiums on Miami Beach.
As the Robert Schirmer Professor of Architecture at Princeton University for the past 39 years, he has enabled coundess new generations of architects to think “outside the box.”
Leonard Miller
Honorary Doctor of Business Administration
Forty-five years ago, Leonard Miller arrived in Miami newly graduated from Harvard University and with a desire to try his hand in real estate. Since then, he has built one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, Lennar Corporation, and a leading real estate and property management company, LNR Property Corporation.
As president and chief executive officer of Lennar Corporation, Miller oversaw the expansion of the company from Florida to Arizona, Texas, California, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Minnesota, Ohio, Colorado, North Carolina, and Michigan.
In 1997 Miller became chairman of the board of Lennar Corporation, while his son, Stuart, succeeded him as president and chief executive officer of the company. That same year, Miller
formed LNR Property, which owns and manages more than 90 apartment complexes, a dozen shopping centers, some 25 office buildings, five industrial properties, nine hotels, and 2.2 million square feet of commercial land.
Miller has been a builder of the arts, education, philanthropy, and other worthy causes. At the University of Miami he has served on the Board of Trustees for 18 years, four as chairman, and is currendy a Life Trustee.
Mario J. Molina
Honorary Doctor of Science
It can be said that we owe the very air we breathe, as well as the future of all life on Earth, in part to Nobel Laureate Mario J. Molina. His pioneering research helped identify the cause of the depletion of Earths protective ozone layer and was the basis for the development of a global protocol for the protection of the ozone layer that was negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations and signed in Montreal, Canada, in 1987.
It was in a 1974 landmark Nature magazine article that Molina, then a professor at the University of Califor-nia-Irvine, and his colleague, Professor Sherwood Rowland, identified the threat to the ozone layer from chloro-
fluorocarbon (CFC) gases—“freons”— which were commonly used in spray bottles, in plastic foam, and as the cooling medium for refrigeration.
The researchers calculated that if human use of CFC gases was to continue at an unaltered rate, the ozone layer would be depleted after mere decades. Molina and two of his colleagues were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for their research.
William J. Raspberry
Honorary Doctor of Journalism
One of the most influential journalists of our time, William J. Raspberry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist whose insightful social commentary has become the conscience of a nation. Whether he is discussing race, education, crime, politics, justice, violence, substance abuse, or any of the other difficult issues facing our society, he has the ability to ask penetrating questions on both sides of a subject.
Raspberry has been a Washington Post columnist for 25 years. His first columns ran in 1966 in the local section of the post, and in 1971 they had become so popular that they were featured on the newspaper’s op-ed page.
Demand by newspaper editors to buy his column resulted in its syndication by The Washington Post Writers Group in 1977. In addition to his writing, Raspberry teaches at Duke University, where he holds the Knight Chair in Communications and Journalism.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Honorary Doctor of Letters
One of the preeminent historians and social commentators of our time,
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., infuses his writing with a sensitive combination of wit, wisdom, and passion. The two-time Pulitzer Prizewinning author has the extraordinary distinction of having personally experienced much of the tumultuous history he chronicles.
A summa cum laude graduate of Harvard University, he published his first historical biography in 1939, followed by his biography of America’s seventh president, The Age of Andrew Jackson, which received the Pulitzer Prize in 1946. He was appointed special assistant to President John F. Kennedy in 1961, and won his second Pulitzer Prize for the book, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House.
More recently, in the first volume of his memoirs, A Life in the 20th Century, Schlesinger recounts the innocent beginnings of the past century, sharing his vivid personal impressions of one of the most eventful eras in our history.