Nancy Hatch Dupree, Doctor of Humane Letters
What a life. In your forty-year affair with the country of Afghanistan you have been thrown from a stallion and rescued by nomads, hosted the most influential political salon, coordinated international relief efforts, and been rejected as a suspected spy only to be re-embraced 14 years later. Most notable, though, have been your efforts to preserve Afghanistan’s cultural treasures. You have written the definitive guidebooks and more than four hundred and fifty articles and reports on the country’s past. As founder of the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage you have produced a photo catalogue of the country’s monuments, sent libraries-in-a-box to remote villages, and reclaimed items looted from the Kabul Museum in the early nineties. You are now working to build a center to house twenty-five thousand precious documents. All of these efforts, often undertaken at considerable risk, help ensure that the cultural DNA of this troubled land can still be passed on, since, as you have said, “The more knowledge people have, the easier it will be for them to rebuild.”
I hereby declare you recipient of the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, entitled to all the rights, honors, and privileges appertaining thereto.
June 6, 2004
Morton Owen Schapiro
President of the College