While Harvard and Yale may have been adversaries last Saturday, Oxford University united the two schools yesterday when it awarded special honorary degrees to Presidents Neil L. Rudenstine of Harvard and Richard C. Levin of Yale.
Oxford honorary degrees are usually reserved for Oxford graduates, and since both Levin and Rudenstine attended the university as Rhodes scholars, they are considered "Oxonians." Each was named Doctor of Civil Law.
Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles, who received his doctorate from Oxford in 1961, said he was "delighted" for the president.
"The happy circumstance of the two presidents each having Oxford degrees persuaded Oxford to this rather appropriate `two-fer,'" Knowles said.
The award had a double meaning, celebrating not only the achievements of two American Oxford graduates, but also the connection between the three universities.
"It was a celebration of the links that exist and will, we hope, continue to flourish," said Nicky Old, a spokesperson for Oxford.
According to Old, 20 percent of senior American scholars studying at British universities are at Oxford, and more than 600 American students are currently enrolled there.
The ceremony began on what was a sunny, if unseasonably chilly morning, as the two presidents donned red academic gowns and marched in a procession past the most historic buildings at the ancient English university.
In a small auditorium known as Convocation House, a hundred or so watched as the Public Orator, a professor named Jasper Griffin, gave Latin speeches, praising first Levin and then Rudenstine.
Griffin called Rudenstine "a man of true humanity, scholarly in literature, judicious and powerful in action."
"As Oxford has always enjoyed a friendly rivalry with Cambridge, so has Harvard with Yale. Today, however, there is no trace of that but only perfect harmony," Griffin declared in Latin. "No more compelling evidence could exist of the close connections which we in Oxford enjoy with the leading universities of America than the fact that Dr. Neil Rudenstine is one of us."
The Chancellor of Oxford, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, then welcomed the two men as Oxford graduates in Latin.
Rudenstine studied English Literature Levin studied economics at Oxford's MertonCollege from 1968 to 1971. He later became aprofessor of Economics at Yale. Oxford confers honorary degrees each June andJuly in a regular ceremony known as theencaenia, but the university also holdsspecial convocations with some frequency. Severalweeks ago, another special ceremony was held tohonor President Vaclav Havel of the CzechRepublic
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