Commencement

Leaders in entertainment, education and literature to be honored at May 19th Commencements

The president of MTV Networks Entertainment, an influential film critic, a prominent sociologist and social activist, and a lauded writer and winner of a McArthur Foundation ‘genius’ grant each will receive honorary degrees at Emerson College’s Commencement exercises on Monday, May 19, at the Citi Center/Wang Theatre.

Some 750 bachelor’s degrees will be conferred at the 128th annual undergraduate ceremony, which begins at 11 a.m. Three hundred and twenty-five master’s degrees will be conferred during the graduate exercises, which start at 3 p.m. Receptions for family and friends will be held on Boston Common following each event.

MTV president and Emerson alumnus Doug Herzog ’81 (r) will deliver the undergraduate address. Herzog is former president of Comedy Central, where he spearheaded several current signature standouts, including the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning series The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and South Park.

Herzog will receive an honorary degree along with film critic Andrew Sarris, who served as film critic for the Village Voice for almost 30 years and as the editor of the English-language version of the influential French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema. He is best known as the primary spokesman for the “politique des auteurs” -- or auteur theory.

The graduate address will be delivered by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, a philosophy professor who has authored short stories, essays, biographies and five novels, including the critically acclaimed novel, The Mind-Body Problem. She won a MacArthur prize in 1996 in recognition of “novels and short stories (that) dramatize the concerns of philosophy without sacrificing the demands of imaginative storytelling."

Goldstein will receive an honorary degree along with Charles V. Willie, the Charles William Eliot Professor of Education Emeritus at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. Willie’s 50 years of teaching, research and public policy initiatives have focused on education, family affairs, public health, community organizations and race and ethnic relations.