193rd Commencement Honorary Degree Recipients

Ian Bassin ’98, Executive Director of Protect Democracy, will deliver the commencement address during Wesleyan University’s 193rd Commencement ceremony on May 25, 2025. Bassin will receive an honorary degree alongside fellow recipients Lael Brainard ’83, P’22, who served as director of the National Economic Council under President Joe Biden, and Percival Everett, celebrated author and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

“Wesleyan’s alumni and distinguished honorees have long exemplified the University’s founding principle of contributing to the good of the individual and the good of the world,” said President Michael S. Roth. “At a time when American democracy is under great pressure and renewed efforts emerge to erase progress in acknowledging our nation’s history with marginalized communities, we celebrate efforts to advance that progress and strengthen our democracy. Ian Bassin, Lael Brainard, and Percival Everett have had profound impact in these regards—be it through activism, expert counsel, or satirical wit—and we are thrilled to recognize them with Wesleyan’s highest honor.”

Ian Bassin is co-founder and Executive Director of Protect Democracy. He previously served as Associate White House Counsel under President Obama, where in addition to counseling the President and senior White House staff on administrative and constitutional law, he worked to ensure that executive branch officials complied with the laws, rules and norms that protect the fundamentally democratic nature of our government. His writing on democracy, authoritarianism, and American law and politics has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Salon, The New York Review of Books and other publications. A recipient of a 2023 MacArthur Fellowship and the Skoll Award for Social Innovation, he has repeatedly been named among the 500 most influential people in Washington by Washingtonian Magazine. He received his JD from Yale Law School and a BA from Wesleyan University.

Lael Brainard has served as the 14th Director of the National Economic Council, Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve, and Undersecretary of the Treasury. With extensive senior leadership experience in macro, fiscal, and monetary policymaking, Brainard has contributed to the successful resolution of several financial crises, including the Asian financial crisis, Euro Area Crisis, COVID-19 crisis, 2023 debt limit impasse, and U.S. regional banking crisis. The New York Times has described Brainard as “America’s top financial diplomat” for her high-level negotiations with China and Europe. Brainard was an assistant and associate professor of applied economics at MIT Sloan School of Management. She founded the Brookings Global Economy and Development program. Brainard received a BA with university honors from Wesleyan University and a PhD in economics from Harvard University, where she was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship. She is also the recipient of a White House Fellowship, the Alexander Hamilton Award, and the Harvard Centennial Medal.

Percival Everett is the author of over thirty books, including The Trees (shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and winner of the 2022 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Erasure (adapted into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction), and most recently the bestseller James (shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, won the 2024 National Book Award, and was a finalist for the Orwell Prize for Fiction). The New Yorker praised Everett for having “regularly exploded our models of genre and identity,” while The New York Times described James as “majestic,” adding that “Everett, like [Mark] Twain, is a master of American argot; he is the code switcher’s code switcher.” Everett has received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction and has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Everett received a BA from the University of Miami and an MA in fiction writing from Brown University. He is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

A list of past honorary degree recipients and Commencement speakers is available on the Wesleyan website.

Photo of Ian Bassin courtesy of John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Photo of Percival Everett by Michael Avedon.