2005 Honorands Citations

Martha Craven Nussbaum

Philosopher, classicist and public intellectual, Martha Nussbaum is one of this country’s foremost thinkers, authors and teachers on subjects of central human importance. As the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago Law School, she holds appointments in the university’s Philosophy Department, Divinity School and Law School. The recipient of many academic awards and honors, notably her university’s Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching, professor Nussbaum is a prolific author and editor whose books have brought her worldwide acclaim as a legal theorist, a philosopher and a classical scholar.

Her landmark book, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, one of ten she has written and an equal number she has edited, argues persuasively for the importance of connecting education with citizenship, urging us all to acknowledge the essential role of the liberal arts curriculum in developing “citizens of the world.” All citizens of the world, she states, need three things that the liberal arts education provides: the Socratic ability to examine oneself and to think critically about ideas that are put forward in public debate; the ability to think of oneself as a “citizen of the world,” that is, one who is related to people all over the globe by complex ties of knowledge and mutual responsibility; and the ability to use imagination, literature and the arts to think what it might be like to be in the situation of a person very different from oneself — whether in race, gender, national origin or sexual identity.

The values reflected in professor Nussbaum’s book are those which we at UNC Asheville strive to instill in our students as we prepare them to be informed and thoughtful citizens in an increasingly interdependent world.

“The most prominent female philosopher in America,” according to The New York Times, Dr. Nussbaum is perhaps the most widely read and influential classicist writing today. Professor Nussbaum has brought the great authors of Greek and Roman philosophy alive for many contemporary readers, and her contributions to reinterpreting these sources, especially those dealing with moral philosophy, have engendered a widespread reassessment of the relevance of these authors to current issues.

She has taught at Harvard, Brown and Oxford Universities, and has been honored by her colleagues as a national president of the American Philosophical Association and election as a fellow in the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She also is an academician in the Academy of Finland.

The intellectual vigor and intensity that characterize her life’s work as a public intellectual also distinguish her classroom teaching. As a professor of Philosophy and the Classics at Harvard, where she earned both master’s and doctoral degrees, professor Nussbaum was an early practitioner of teaching across the disciplines, now widely practiced among liberal arts institutions, including UNC Asheville. Her discussions of multicultural reforms in education and her interest in non-Western traditions have made her accessible to audiences within and outside the traditional academy.

A powerful and engaging speaker, which we will discover during our commencement ceremonies, professor Nussbaum is swift and convincing whether she is discussing moral philosophy, international economics, literature and the arts, or human emotions and law—the topic of her latest book, Hiding from Humanity: Shame, Disgust and the Law. We at UNC Asheville are privileged to experience her vitality and her broad-based knowledge as one of this country’s acclaimed scholars. We are also privileged to experience her compassion, her reasoned conviction and her insight toward the shared goal of becoming citizens of the world — people who are inextricably connected to others around the globe by mutual responsibilities, shared knowledge and similar aspirations to make a difference and to work toward solving some of the complex problems of the day.

UNC Asheville proudly adds to professor Nussbaum’s accolades by conferring the Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree at our 2005 commencement.
 

William Ivey Long

Native North Carolinian William Ivey Long is a four-time Tony Award-winning costume designer in New York, with six shows currently running on Broadway and others touring and playing in cities around the world. His designs for many of Broadway’s most popular musicals have won him the prestigious Tony, first in 1982 for his work on the original Broadway production of Nine, followed by Crazy for You in 1992, The Producers in 2001, and Hairspray in 2003.

William Ivey Long comes from a family with a great theater tradition, and he grew up, quite literally, on stage. When his father was technical director for the Raleigh Little Theatre, the family lived in a dressing room off stage left. While his mother and father taught drama at the University of North Carolina, he spent hours in the company of the famed Carolina Playmakers, whose accomplished designers, actors and technicians instilled in him a love of dramatic arts, an appreciation of beauty and an uncommon sense of the creative. When the family traveled to Manteo each summer to work with the celebrated outdoor drama The Lost Colony, his father handled technical direction, his mother starred as Queen Elizabeth, and Mr. Long played one of the colony’s ill-fated children.

In some ways, the most successful costume designer on Broadway is a study in contrasts. With family roots that go back to the 17th century when his ancestor Arthur Long settled in Seaboard, North Carolina, after fighting in Bacon’s Rebellion at Jamestown, Mr. Long is, as he says of himself, “about as North Carolina as you can get.” He moves effortlessly between the cosmopolitan world of New York and the tranquility of rural Seaboard, where 12 generations of Longs have made their home. Like his parents, he lends his considerable talents to The Lost Colony, designing sets and costumes for the longest-running outdoor drama in the country. Meanwhile his eye-catching, avant garde costumes grace Broadway as well as productions for opera, dance, television, film, the concert stage, the fashion runway and many special events.
He is friends with actors Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver and playwrights Christopher Durang and Wendy Wasserstein — his classmates in the M.F.A. program at Yale University Drama School.

He is the National Theatre Conference’s Person of the Year for 2000, and he is the recipient of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Legend of Fashion Award.

At home, he holds North Carolina’s highest civilian honor, the Order of the Long Leaf Pine; the North Carolina Award for Fine Arts; the Carolina Playmakers’ Lifetime Achievement Award; and the Roanoke Island Historical Association’s Morrison Award. His alma mater, the College of William and Mary, honored him with its Leslie Cheek Award for Outstanding Presentation in the Arts and with an honorary doctoral degree at last spring’s commencement.

William Ivey Long masterfully bridges two wonderful worlds, the pulsing city of New York and the serenity of his North Carolina home. In both worlds, he is honored and respected for his brilliance and accomplishment, for his energy and passion for excellence in his work, and for his innumerable contributions to community, state and nation.

Broadway director Michael Wilson, another Tar Heel in New York, sums it up best: “He does Hairspray, and he does The Lost Colony. What more do you want?”

And so to William Ivey Long, who reminds us of the importance of following our dreams, using our talents to exceptional purpose, broadening our horizons while revering home and giving back to community, UNC Asheville proudly presents the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.


Amanda Sequoyah Swimmer

A distinguished artisan and one of Cherokee’s best-known potters and teachers, Amanda Sequoyah Swimmer has dedicated her life to carrying on the traditions of her ancestors. Immensely skilled and supremely dedicated to this noble purpose, she is today one of the great artists and icons of the Eastern Band of Cherokee.

A native and lifelong resident of Big Cove on the Qualla Boundary of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, Mrs. Swimmer works in a time-honored tradition that was almost lost during the 19th-century removal to Oklahoma. As a young newlywed in the mid-1930s, she discovered and gathered clay with her husband, Luke Swimmer, near their home. She taught herself to form pots and experimented with firing them in an open pit, which they built in their yard. Committed, persistent and above all talented, Mrs. Swimmer refined her techniques and sold her first pots to tourists who were brought to their home by a ranger in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Mrs. Swimmer honed her skills while demonstrating pottery making at the Oconaluftee Indian Village, where for more than 35 years she patiently and creatively shared her love for her land, her people, her culture and her craft with the many visitors to this unique replica of an early 18th-century Cherokee community.

Mrs. Swimmer’s techniques are ancient. She has never used a potter’s wheel. Rather, she builds her distinctive wedding vases, animal bowls and other beautiful pieces with her hands, washes these creations in water, smoothes them with a paddle, and decorates them with carved paddles and sharpened sticks. After drying them in the sun, she “burns” them in an open fire, producing hues of brown, orange, gray and black depending on the type of wood being burned.

The enjoyment and effort she pours into her work is evident, and has brought her many awards — from first-place prizes at the annual Cherokee Fall Festival to North Carolina’s Folk Heritage Award in 1994. Beautiful pieces of her pottery are on display across the United States — in Washington, New Mexico and Raleigh, as well as Qualla Arts and Crafts in Cherokee.

Mrs. Swimmer’s grounding in her heritage and dedication to traditional values, melded with her singular flair for creating beauty, are a gift to each one of us.

A founding member of the Cherokee Potters Guild, she has responded to a personal imperative to hand down her considerable talents and this age-old Cherokee custom, a 2,000-year legacy that represents the longest continuing pottery tradition of any American tribe still living on its original land.

Mrs. Swimmer continues to teach — at Cherokee Elementary School, where she is passing the gifts of knowledge and creativity to the younger generation, and throughout Western North Carolina, including the renowned John C. Campbell Folk School, and at a number of colleges. Her motivation, she says, is simply this: “I always think about my old ancestors, and that I ought to just keep going, and keep making pottery, and teaching others to make pottery.”

What Amanda Swimmer also has given us is a living example of humility meeting great ability, wisdom meeting acquired skills, perseverance meeting opportunity. She is a true example for each one of us of how to conduct our daily lives, when she says unequivocally, “I just always wanted to do my best.”

To Amanda Swimmer, legendary Cherokee craftswoman, the “granny of one of our people” as she is known on the Qualla Boundary, UNC Asheville confers the Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree. And we share with you the motto of our university, “Ca de see. W’dai ne ga ne ha.” I lift up my eyes to the hills.”