2016 Pardee RAND Commencement & Alumni Weekend

Every two years, Pardee RAND encourages alumni to come back, celebrate the newest members of the academy, and reconnect with old friends. The latest biennial Pardee RAND Commencement Ceremony was June 18, 2016, at which the school awarded 45 doctoral degrees and 46 master's degrees. On the Friday evening prior, we hosted a dinner for graduating students and Pardee RAND alumni.

We kicked off the weekend's events on Friday, June 17, with a welcome reception, followed by a Policy Dialogue on the topic of "creating communities," featuring

• Alum Arthur Brooks (cohort '96), president of the American Enterprise Institute
• Carolyn Meyers, president of Jackson State University, who was featured in the book The Revolution in Higher Education
• Warren Olney, host of the syndicated public radio show To the Point and KCRW's Olney in L.A.

A Celebratory Dinner followed the panel discussion, and included the presentation of the third biennial Alumni Leadership Award to Arthur Brooks (cohort '96).

The Commencement Ceremony was held on Saturday, June 18, in the courtyard of RAND's Santa Monica headquarters campus. The Hon. John Lewis, member of the U.S. House of Representatives representing Georgia's 5th Congressional District, delivered the commencement keynote address and received an honorary degree, along with Jackson, Olney, and RAND alum Joseph Newhouse.

A Graduates' Lunch was held following the ceremony on the third floor patio for graduates and their friends and families.

Read More

• Dean's Remarks • RAND President's Remarks • Keynote Address by the Hon. John Lewis
• Graduate Address by Sinduja Srinivasan (cohort '09) • Selected photos (on Facebook)

2016 Commencement Weekend Honorees

John Robert Lewis (Commencement speaker and honorary degree recipient) has dedicated his life to protecting human rights, securing civil liberties, and building what he calls "The Beloved Community" in America. His dedication to the highest ethical standards and moral principles has won him the admiration of many of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the United States Congress. He has been called "the conscience of the U.S. Congress," and Roll Call magazine has said, "John Lewis ... is a genuine American hero and moral leader who commands widespread respect in the chamber."

During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, from 1963 to 1966, Lewis was named Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which he helped form. At the age of 23, he was an architect of and a keynote speaker at the historic March on Washington in August 1963. In 1981, he was elected to the Atlanta City Council. He was elected to Congress in November 1986 and has served as U.S. Representative of Georgia's Fifth Congressional District since then. John Lewis is the recipient of numerous awards from eminent national and international institutions, including the highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Carolyn Meyers (Friday panelist and honorary degree recipient), is the 10th president of Jackson State University and a professor of civil and environmental engineering.

We are recognizing Meyers because of the transformational change she has brought to this historically black university, change that we learned about through her connection with RAND’s Gulf States office and which has been highlighted in the book The Revolution in Higher Education by Richard DeMillo.

Meyers brought to Jackson State University more than 30 years of academic and administrative leadership experience in higher education, serving most recently as President of Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia. She served as Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs for North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where she was a tenured professor of mechanical engineering and Dean of the College of Engineering. Meyers also was a tenured faculty member at the Georgia Institute of Technology and was the first Associate Dean for Research in its College of Engineering.

Meyers earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Howard University, a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and a doctorate in chemical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and completed post-doctoral work at Harvard University. She is a fellow in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and a board member of the American Council on Education.

Warren Olney (Friday panelist and honorary degree recipient) is the host and executive producer of the nationally syndicated Public Radio International show To the Point. From 1992 to 2016 he also hosted Which Way, L.A.?, the signature daily local news program on 89.9 KCRW Santa Monica that he began in the aftermath of the L.A. riots.

Olney received the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award for his broad achievements in television news as well as his storied career over 20 years on public radio, both locally and nationally. He is a veteran broadcast journalist. Concurrent with his hosting duties on Which Way, LA?, from June 1999 to September 2000 he served as co-anchor of KCET-TV's Life & Times Tonight, a nightly public affairs show.

Olney was a television news reporter and anchor from 1966 to 1991, working in Washington, D.C., Sacramento, and Los Angeles. His special projects and investigations have focused on crime, science, and the environment, among other subjects. Overseas assignments took him to Europe, Asia, and Central America. At the University of Southern California, Olney developed and taught "Broadcast Journalism," a laboratory course for graduate and undergraduate students, from 1976 to 1982. Olney received his BA in English, magna cum laude, from Amherst College (Massachusetts) and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Joseph Newhouse (honorary degree recipient) is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy and Management at Harvard University, Director of the Division of Health Policy Research and Education, chair of the Committee on Higher Degrees in Health Policy, and Director of the Interfaculty Initiative in Health Policy. He is a member of the faculties of the Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard Medical School, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, as well as a Faculty Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He received B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from Harvard University.

Newhouse spent the first twenty years of his career at RAND, where he designed and directed the RAND Health Insurance Experiment. From 1981 to 1985 he was head of the RAND Economics Department. In 1981 he became the founding editor of the Journal of Health Economics, which he edited for 30 years. He is a current member of the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine and a past member of the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

From 2007 to 2012 he served on the CBO Board of Health Advisers, from 2006 to 2012 on the Committee on National Statistics of the National Research Council, from 2004 to 2012 on the Science, Technology, and Economic Policy board of the National Research Council, and from 1999 to 2003 as a regent of the National Library of Medicine.

Arthur Brooks (Friday panel member and Alumni Leadership Award recipient) is president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He is also the Beth and Ravenel Curry Scholar in Free Enterprise at AEI. Immediately before joining AEI, Brooks was the Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government at Syracuse University, where he taught economics and social entrepreneurship.

Brooks is the author of 11 books and hundreds of articles on topics including the role of government, fairness, economic opportunity, happiness, and the morality of free enterprise. His latest book is the New York Times best-seller The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America (Broadside Books, 2015). His other books include the New York Times best-seller The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise (Basic Books, 2012), The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future (Basic Books, 2010), Gross National Happiness (Basic Books, 2008), Social Entrepreneurship (Prentice Hall, 2008), and Who Really Cares (Basic Books, 2006). Before pursuing his work in public policy, Brooks spent 12 years as a classical musician in the United States and Spain.

Brooks is a frequent guest on national television and radio talk shows and has been published widely in publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

Brooks has a Ph.D. and an M.Phil. in policy analysis from the RAND Graduate School, now the Pardee RAND Graduate School. He also holds an M.A. in economics from Florida Atlantic University and a B.A. in economics from Thomas Edison State College.