President Barack Obama J.D.’91 conferred the Medal of Freedom on 16 people at a White House ceremony on August 12, among them:
U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy ’54, LL.D.’08 (who was represented by his children, as he continued to fight brain cancer and mourned the death of his sister Eunice Shriver; his Harvard honorary degree was conferred in a special ceremony last fall);
former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who was awarded the Radcliffe Institute Medal last June;
former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, LL.M. ’68, LL.D. ’98, the 1998 Commencement speaker;
University of Chicago geneticist and cancer specialist Janet Davison Rowley, S.D.’08, recognized at Commencement in 2008; and
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, LL.D. ’79 the anti-apartheid leader who served as a Harvard Overseer.
