Harvard President Bacow to be awarded honorary doctorate from U of Haifa
UH and Harvard have recently been collaborating with one another in marine sciences, archaeology and environmental studies.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFHarvard President Lawrence Bacow(photo credit: UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA)
Harvard President Lawrence Bacow will be receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Haifa.UH announced that it will confer the Harvard president with an honorary doctorate in recognition of his "global leadership in higher education, redefining the critical role universities play in developing and sustaining communities, and his advocacy for the importance of diversity within education."Bacow will receive the honor on March 15 during a virtual event organized by the university. He is slated to deliver an address that will focus on the importance of academia and the ever-changing landscape of higher education amid the coronavirus pandemic. Bacow will also talk about progressing social mobility on and off campus.As of late, UH and Harvard have been collaborating with one another in marine sciences, archaeology and environmental studies. The two are currently conducting a joint study on the etiology of large sea mammals. According to UH, it is "considered the world’s most ambitious research initiative on that topic."Bacow earned his S.B. in economics from MIT, later to go on to get his J.D., M.P.P. and Ph.D. from Harvard Law School and Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He served as a faculty member at MIT for 24 years, and as its chancellor for four, before being elected as president of Tufts University, a role which he held for 10 years. In 2010, he was appointed by former US president Barack Obama to the board of advisors for the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.In 2018, seven years after becoming a part of the Harvard board, he was named the 29th president of the university.“Throughout his career, president Bacow has advocated for the enduring values of colleges as enablers of the American dream,” said University of Haifa president Prof. Ron Robin. “It is a great privilege to confer upon him an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Haifa.”"The honor for President Bacow comes as both Harvard and University of Haifa prioritize the issue of social mobility," the university explained."Just as Harvard’s presence has historically generated socioeconomic progress in its surrounding neighborhoods of Cambridge and Allston, University of Haifa’s primary mission in recent years has centered on a “multiversity” concept: a strategic mechanism for driving progress in the city of Haifa and throughout northern Israel, a region that experiences higher rates of poverty and unemployment than the country’s national averages."
