Muhammad Ali among Honorary Degree Recipients
Muhlenberg College will award honorary doctoral degrees to Muhammad Ali, Galway Kinnell and The Honorable Kathleen A. McGinty at its 161st Commencement ceremony, Sunday, May 17, at 10 a.m. on the College Green.Thursday, April 16, 2009 11:22 AM
Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.) is a retired American boxer. In 1999, Ali was crowned "Sportsman of the Century" by Sports Illustrated. He won the World Heavyweight Boxing championship three times, and won the North American Boxing Federation championship as well as an Olympic gold medal.
Recently he was voted into Forbes Celebrity 100, coming in at number 13 behind Donald Trump. In 1987 he was selected by the California Bicentennial Foundation for the U.S. Constitution to personify the vitality of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights in various high profile activities. He also published an oral history, Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times with Thomas Hauser, in 1991. Ali received a Spirit of America Award calling him the most recognized American in the world. In 1996, he had the honor of lighting the flame at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony on November 9, 2005 and the prestigious "Otto Hahn peace medal in Gold" of the United Nations Association of Germany (DGVN) in Berlin for his work with the US civil rights movement and the United Nations (December 17, 2005).
On November 19, 2005 (Ali's 19th wedding anniversary), the $60 million non-profit Muhammad Ali Center opened in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. In addition to displaying his boxing memorabilia, the center focuses on core themes of peace, social responsibility, respect, and personal growth.
Galway Kinnell is the author of thirteen books of poetry and one of the most influential and celebrated American poets of our time. He has become famous for his powerful readings of his poetry. For his Selected Poems (1982), he received both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Poetry. He is perhaps best known for The Book of Nightmares (1971), a series of ten poems that meditate on birth and death, on the civil rights movement, the destructiveness of man and the Vietnam War. Kinnell’s most recent volume of poetry is titled, Strong is Your Hold (2006), which includes a searching elegy on 9-11.
Until his recent retirement, he was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing at NYU.
The Honorable Kathleen A. McGinty is founding partner, Peregrine Technology Partners LLC, a firm focused on the commercialization of clean technologies. She is a Director at NRG Energy, Inc., a leading wholesale power company, and an Operating Partner at Element LLC, a private equity firm investing in early and mid-stage clean technology companies.
McGinty recently stepped down as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and as Chair of the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority. During her tenure, she helped lead the state’s successful effort to attract market-leading renewable energy companies to headquarter and manufacture in Pennsylvania, bringing more than a $1 billion in new investment and creating some 3,000 new jobs.
Previous to her service in Pennsylvania, McGinty was Bill Clinton’s Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and Legislative Assistant and Environmental Advisor to then-Senator Al Gore.
