BRUNSWICK, Maine — Bowdoin College pulled out all the stops last night for its question-and-answer session with Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Fauci is a 2021 Bowdoin College honorary degree recipient, alongside Maine astronaut Dr. Jessica Meir, renowned civil rights activist and Freedom Rider William Harbour (to be presented posthumously) and civil rights activist and Campaign Zero co-founder DeRay Mckesson, a member of the Bowdoin College Class of 2007. They all joined in the virtual chat Wednesday, giving Bowdoin students an opportunity to chat one-on-one with some of the nation's brightest minds.
The discussion was moderated by Bowdoin alumna, Dr. Judith Currier, a professor of medicine at UCLA Division of Infectious Diseases, UCLA Medical Center.
Bowdoin’s honorary degree recipients were announced in Dec. 2020. Doug Cook, a spokesperson for Bowdoin, said it’s a Bowdoin College tradition “not only to bestow honorary degrees each year to a small handful of people who are leading the way in their respective fields but to invite them to share insights from their worlds with the Bowdoin community.”
The conversation kicked off with a welcome from Olympic gold medal-winning marathon champion Joan Benoit Samuelson, who is also a Bowdoin grad. She was the first woman to win a gold medal in the marathon at the Olympics, and she credits Fauci with showing the same kind of grit in his work to fight the pandemic.
"I was a Bowdoin student when I ran my first marathon, my first Boston Marathon, in 1979," Benoit Samuelson told Fauci during the event. "And I still have that singlet which will be in the warm hands of the college very soon. But we want you to have your very own. And it's your pace, not mine, that will carry us through this pandemic."
Fauci has taken on a cult-like status during the COVID-19 pandemic, and was described by The New York Times and The New Yorker as one of the most trusted medical figures in the country.
Harbour participated in the Freedom Rides in 1961, traveling from Nashville to Montgomery, Alabama, and later from Nashville to Jackson, Mississippi.
McKesson, who graduated from Bowdoin in 2007, is a leading voice in the Black Lives Matter movement and co-founded Campaign Zero, a nonprofit organization that promotes legislative and policy solutions to police violence and mass incarceration.
Meir, who grew up in Caribou, Maine, is a NASA astronaut, marine biologist, and physiologist. She has spent 205 days in space. In December, she became a member of the Artemis Team, which will send the first human to the moon in nearly 50 years. If she's chosen, Meir could be the first woman on the moon.
Click here to learn more about the 2021 honorary degree recipients.
Cook said the honorary doctorates will be conferred at Bowdoin’s commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 29, 2021, on the steps of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. The honorary degree recipients will be attending virtually.