The College will honor a Class of '64 alumnus and an education and civil rights icon for service to humanity.
UPDATE May 3, 2023: Due to unforeseen circumstances, Jon Kabat-Zinn '64 — one of our two honorary degree recipients — is unable to attend the ceremony.
Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn '64, developer of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), and Joan Cannady Countryman, a standout figure in civil rights and education in Philadelphia and beyond, will receive honorary degrees at Haverford during the Class of 2023 commencement on Saturday, May 13.
Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn
A practitioner of Buddhist meditation and yoga since 1965, when he was a graduate student in molecular biology at MIT, Jon Kabat-Zinn achieved international recognition following the publication of his book, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness (1990). A 1993 appearance in a PBS series, Healing and the Mind, with Bill Moyers, introduced MBSR to a mainstream audience. Jon is the author of a series of scientific papers on mindfulness, as well as fifteen books published in over 45 languages.
His pioneering work was undertaken while a professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. As described on his website, "From its beginning in 1979, MBSR was envisaged as a public health project rather than a therapy. The aim was, over time, to move the bell-curve of society in the direction of greater health and wellbeing on every level, from the individual medical patient or person trying to optimize their health, to society more broadly, and to the health of the planet as a whole — since one cannot be fully healthy in an unhealthy and toxic world. Mindfulness, in all its guises, is essentially a universal approach toward suffering, especially suffering caused by our all-too-human tendency to be caught up in unhealthy mindsets as well as, often, circumstances much larger than we are which sometimes make it difficult to be fully at home in our own bodies and our own lives."
The first African American graduate of Germantown Friends School, in 1958, Joan Cannady Countryman became a Quaker activist and educator committed to the struggle for a better world. After undergraduate study at Sarah Lawrence College, she earned a graduate degree in Urban Planning from Yale and pursued a Fulbright scholarship at the London School of Economics. The early 60's also brought involvement in the Northern Student Movement, a group that her husband Peter Countryman founded to "persuade college campuses to support the southern student civil rights movement and to educate northern students about racial disparities in their own communities. Many of us on New England campuses," she has written, "well aware of the sit-ins in the south, were hungry to be part of the new movement."
Countryman would go on to teach mathematics at GFS for 23 years, before her work as a teacher and administrator – head of school at the Lincoln School in Rhode Island – led to her role in creating the Oprah Winfrey Leadership School for Girls in South Africa.
A former member of the Board of Managers at Haverford, she has also served as Clerk of the Corporation of the College and, more recently, has spoken out about the advantages of city living for older people while creating communities where residents can age in wise and healthy ways.
Since 1858, Haverford has awarded honorary degrees in recognition of those whose lives and work speak of the College's mission and values. The number of recipients each year varies. They are selected by a committee of students, faculty, staff, and alumni representatives.
