Katherine A. Couric, Doctor of Laws
Next to the U.S. presidency, there may have been no more iconic a male position in American society than that of network evening news anchor. Well, no more indeed ... since your historic broadcast of September 5, 2006, finally broke that rigid mold. To the responsibilities of evening news anchor and managing editor you have added those of 60 Minutes correspondent and anchor of CBS News primetime specials. These opportunities followed your record-breaking run as Today show co-anchor (fifteen years of being bright at an unnaturally early hour); your service as Pentagon reporter, including two stints covering the Gulf War; and your having interviewed practically every national and world leader. You are also known, since the death of your husband, for your dedication to the battle against colon cancer. In another break of taboo, you broadcast your own colonoscopy, which is credited with a twenty percent jump in that procedure nationwide and resulted in the saving of who knows how many lives. Your fundraising for this cause continues to be prodigious and you helped to establish the innovative, multi-disciplinary center for gastrointestinal health at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. To the satisfaction of having won eight Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and an Edward R. Murrow Award you can add knowledge of the lives that have been saved and improved by your cancer work and the knowledge, too, that whenever the history of society’s opening to women is written, there you will be.
I hereby declare you recipient of the honorary degree Doctor of Laws, entitled to all the rights, honors, and privileges appertaining thereto.
June 3, 2007