Nobel Prize recipient selected to speak at commencement

By Seth Brown     9/24/09 7:00pm

The Commencement Speaker Committee announced Monday that Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize recipient and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, will be the 2010 Rice commencement speaker, concluding a search process that lasted nearly six months. Best known as one of the chief proponents and purveyors of microcredit, Yunus is the founder of the Grameen Bank, which makes small loans to the poor that can be used to help start businesses.

"Yunus is one of the most prominent humanitarians out there," Professor Michael Gustin, chair of the Commencement Speaker Committee, said. "Hopefully in the spring he'll give us a perspective beyond the ordinary. I think he will."

Yunus, a Bangladeshi who received a Ph.D. in economics from Vanderbilt University in 1971, began his business of lending to the poor in 1976. He used the idea of microcredit, loaning small amounts to those who need it, as a way to reduce poverty. His idea has since grown into the Grameen Bank, which boasts nearly eight million members in Bangladesh, and which supports a number of similar institutions throughout the world in parts of Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, Sub- Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

---

---

The announcement of Yunus as the commencement speaker for this year's graduating class marks the end of a search which began in April, before the 2009 commencement ceremony. The selection committee is comprised of a group of undergraduate students, representing this year's and last year's senior classes, as well as Gustin and three graduate students.

Gustin, who has chaired the committee for three consecutive years, said the committee changed the process to make it more relevant to students.

"We [started] the process earlier, and we [tried] to make it important to the people actually graduating," Gustin said.

Physics graduate student Kristjan Stone, who also served on last year's committee, said at the committee's first meeting each member listed the names of 10 people they would like to speak at the ceremony.

Jones College senior Susan Wu, one of the undergraduate committee members, said for the most part the committee listened to the members of the graduating class.

"There was a lot of student input, group discussion, discussion between seniors," Wu said.

Of the names initially compiled, the committee drew together a list of the top 10 speakers. This was submitted to the Office of the President, which then began contacting the prospective speakers.

"The people weren't ranked, per se, but the president's office knew we were really excited about Yunus," Wu said.

Wiess College senior and committee member Tracy Dansker said she was very pleased Yunus accepted the offer.

"Hopefully people will be excited when they do some research and find out what he's about," she said.

Because of confidentiality issues, the committee members interviewed were unable to name others who had been considered, but Dansker added she thought the air of confidentiality was important.

Although Yunus will not be paid to speak at the commencement, which will be held May 15, 2010, a donation will be made by Rice to his charity, and a special award will be given to a graduating student, either an undergraduate or graduate, selected by the awards committee, who has contributed to Yunus' cause. The award winner will be selected by the awards committee.

"I didn't tell the committee what they could or couldn't do," Leebron said, concerning the projected costs of the speakers selected for the final list.

According to several committee members, the costs to host certain speakers range in the tens of thousands. Others accept honorary degrees, which Rice does not offer its speakers, and competition between some schools to get a prominent or prestigious speaker is high.

"I think [the competition] is really stupid, but that's the university culture," Stone said.

Leebron said he found it hard to justify the high cost of commissioning such a speaker, considering that only a small segment of the community generally hears the speech.

"We want to bring speakers to campus that the full community has access to, such as those in the President's Lecture Series," Leebron said.

As for the competition between universities for speakers, Dansker said Rice does an admirable job of avoiding the sort of one-upmanship that other universities get involved in.

"I think Rice takes a really good approach," Dansker said.

---