Paul Farmer received a Doctor of Science during the 2011 Commencement. Farmer is an inspirational scholar, doctor, teacher, and leader. As a physician-anthropologist, he has dedicated his life to serving the world’s poor and to raising the standard of health care around the world. In 1983 he co-founded Partners In Health, an international nonprofit organization that provides direct health care services and undertakes research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. His work focuses on community-based treatment strategies for infectious diseases, health and human rights, and the role of social inequalities in determining…

By Margot Boyer-Dry Early in our time at Wesleyan, we witnessed a student-led campaign to ‘Keep Wesleyan Weird’. At that time, the movement’s language struck me: What does it mean to ‘keep Wesleyan weird’? Surely, there is no shortage of unusual happenings here. You’d be hard-pressed to find another place where people are so excited about raw milk coops, acro-yoga, and entrepreneurial peer haircutting. Still, I don’t think the campaign’s philosophy was so simple. As I have experienced Wesleyan’s bounty of oddities, I have carried with me the words of that early campaign, ‘Keep Wesleyan Weird’; and now, years later,…

Mary Jane Rubenstein, assistant professor of religion, assistant professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, presented the "Senior Voices" baccalaureate address: Dawn points, and another day Prepares for heat and silence Out at sea the dawn wind Wrinkles and slides. I am here Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning. T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets all cycle around the theme of beginning with a kind of solemnity that’s both attentive and introspective. He looks out as the dawn points—out to the almost-day to feel the wind wrinkle and slide. He looks in and finds himself here, or there, or elsewhere.…