News
Former Ambassador to give Commencement address
By Ben Fields ’15
March 6, 2015
Joining the considerable list of Commencement speakers at Hamilton College this year will be Philip Murphy. Murphy is the former United States Ambassador to Germany as well as a former executive at Goldman Sachs. In addition to giving the Commencement address, Murphy will receive an honorary degree from the School along with Grammy Award winner Bill Harley ’77, Philip Lewis, vice president of the Mellon Foundation and professor emeritus at Cornell University and novelist Kamila Shamsie ’94. Shamsie will also deliver the Baccalaureate address.
Murphy had an impressive career as a businessman prior to being appointed by President Obama to his ambassadorial post in 2009. He graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in 1979 and went on to receive an M.B.A. in 1983 from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Murphy spent much of his professional career with Goldman Sachs, where he served as the head of its Frankfurt office from 1993 to 1997. In this position, he oversaw the company’s work in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, as well as working with the emerging post-Cold War nations in Central Europe. His career at Goldman Sachs spanned 23 years in all, finishing as a senior director of the firm prior to his retirement in 2006.
Following his retirement from Goldman Sachs, Murphy served as the Democratic National Committee’s National Finance Chair from 2006 to 2009. He has spent much of his time working in civic, community and philanthropic endeavors. He has served with many different organizations, including the NAACP, the Center for American Progress and 180 Turning Lives Around. Additionally, he co-chaired a national task force on 21st century public education and led a task force on public center employee benefits in New Jersey.
Delivering the Baccalaureate address on Saturday, May 23 is Hamilton alumna Kamila Shamsie. Shamsie graduated with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and received her M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her first novel, In The City By The Sea, was written during her time at UMass, and published in 1998. The book was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the United Kingdom. She received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literature from her home country of Pakistan in 1999. He second novel, Salt and Saffron, was published two years later.
She has published three more novels since, Kartography, Broken Verses and Burnt Shadows, the former two of which have won the Patras Bukhari Award from the Academy of Letters in Pakistan. Her books have been translated into more than 20 languages, and Burnt Shadows has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
Along with Shamsie and Murphy, Bill Harley and Philip Lewis will receive honorary degrees from the College at the 2015 Commencement. Harley is a two-time Grammy award-winning recording artist. He began singing while pursuing his bachelor’s degree at Hamilton in 1975. He uses his singing to tell stories and remind his audience of their common humanity. He has won a variety of national awards, including Parents’ Choice, American Library Association and the highest honor from the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio. He also writes award-winning picture books and novels for children.
Lewis has served as a vice president of the Mellon Foundation since February 2007. He works in grant making to liberal arts colleges and research universities as well as overseeing programs for Scholarly Communication and International Higher Education and Strategic Projects. Lewis received his bachelor’s degree from Davidson College and his Ph.D. in French literature from Yale University. He joined Cornell University’s Department of Romance Studies in 1968, serving as its chair from 1974 to 1980. He later served as a Senior Associate Dean, and later Dean of the College, within Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences. He retired from the university in 2007 and took his current position at the Mellon Foundation.
Hamilton’s 200th class will graduate on Sunday, May 24. The Commencement exercises will be held in the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House, with 505 students expected to receive bachelor’s degrees from the School.