Tag Archives: Honorary Degree

A Princeton Degree For a Yalie: George H.W. Bush Visits Princeton, 1991

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On May 10, 1991, Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush came to Princeton’s cam­pus to receive an hon­orary Doc­tor of Laws degree and ded­i­cate the University’s Social Sci­ence Com­plex. This $20 mil­lion dol­lar project included the newly con­structed Bend­heim and Fisher Halls, as well as a ren­o­va­tion of Cor­win Hall. This Reel Mudd blog post includes video of both of these events, along with other scenes related to the President’s visit.

Pres­i­dent Bush’s visit was notable for sev­eral rea­sons. This cer­e­mony was Bush’s first appear­ance out­side of Wash­ing­ton DC after suf­fer­ing atrial fib­ril­la­tion while jog­ging at Camp David. In addi­tion, Bush’s speech (begin­ning at 00:50:26) was expected to be a major pol­icy speech, though a report indi­cates that the pres­i­dent rewrote the address en route to Prince­ton in order to tone down direct attacks on Con­gress (Daily Prince­ton­ian, Vol­ume 115, Num­ber 65, 13 May 1991). While still pep­pered with crit­i­cism of Con­gress, the President’s talk was mainly a dis­cus­sion of the Exec­u­tive Branch’s pol­icy mak­ing role com­pared to that of the Leg­isla­tive, and Bush’s per­sonal oppo­si­tion to cre­at­ing new bureau­cra­cies. The speech is also pep­pered with humor about the Princeton/Yale rivalry and the President’s place within it (51:42), as well as Bush’s health(50:39), the Nude Olympics (51:22), John F. Kennedy (52:02), and the Prince­ton alle­giances of Sec­re­taries of State George Shultz ’42 and James Baker ‘52  (52:28).
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Bush Receives his hon­orary degree from Pres­i­dent Shapiro *64.
His­tor­i­cal Pho­to­graph Col­lec­tion, Indi­vid­u­als Series, Box MP2

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Past, present and future US presidents at Princeton’s bicentennial, 1947

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Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity cel­e­brated its 200th anniver­sary with a year-long series of events, start­ing on Sep­tem­ber 22, 1946 and end­ing with a con­vo­ca­tion on June 14–17, 1947. The news­reel posted here was shot dur­ing the con­clu­sion of the bicen­ten­nial cel­e­bra­tions on June 17th, when thirty-six nota­bles received hon­orary degrees, includ­ing US Pres­i­dent Harry Tru­man, who gave the con­vo­ca­tion address.

The news­reel opens with footage of Harry Tru­man, pos­ing with for­mer pres­i­dent Her­bert Hoover (already a recip­i­ent of an hon­orary degree) and the wid­ows of US pres­i­dents Grover Cleve­land and Woodrow Wil­son, who were spe­cial guests. The first recip­i­ents fea­tured are Gen­eral Dwight “Ike” Eisen­hower, who would suc­ceed Harry Tru­man as US Pres­i­dent in 1953, and Admi­ral Chester Nimitz (0:37). Both were hon­ored for their lead­er­ship dur­ing the war, Eisen­hower as Supreme Allied Com­man­der, and Nimitz as com­man­der of the Pacific Fleet. Other recip­i­ents shown are Dr. Van­nevar Bush, wartime direc­tor of the Office of Sci­en­tific Research and Devel­op­ment (orga­nizer of the Man­hat­tan Project) and Bernard Baruch, pres­i­den­tial adviser dur­ing both world wars. They are fol­lowed by War­ren Austin, US rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the United Nations, and Vis­count Harold Alexan­der, gov­er­nor gen­eral of Canada (0:43–0:51). Albert Ein­stein, based at the Insti­tute of Advanced Stud­ies, but an hon­ored guest on cam­pus, also par­tic­i­pates in the pro­ces­sion (0:31). The film ends with Pres­i­dent Harry Truman’s ral­ly­ing address, in which he urges the adop­tion of uni­ver­sal mil­i­tary train­ing (1:28).

The news­reel is part of the Uni­ver­sity Archives’ His­tor­i­cal Audio­vi­sual Col­lec­tion (part of item no. 1344).