The University Record, December 5, 1995

Shine, White to receive honorary degrees Dec. 17

Journalist Neal Shine and historian Hayden White will receive honorary degrees at winter commencement Dec. 17.

Some 2,000 students on the Ann Arbor campus expect their degrees this winter. The graduation ceremony will begin at 2 p.m. in Crisler Arena.

President James J. Duderstadt will give the opening remarks. The honorary degree recipients also will make brief remarks. Mary Ann Peterson will be the student speaker. Thomas A. Roach, president of the Alumni Association, also will speak.

Shine, publisher and president of the Detroit Free Press, began his career at the newspaper in 1950 as a copy boy while still a student at the University of Detroit. He rose through the editorial ranks, working as a reporter, columnist, city editor and managing editor. He was named publisher and chief executive officer of the newspaper in 1990.

He won a staff Pulitzer Prize for directing the Free Press' coverage of the 1967 Detroit riot. He was inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in 1990. His other professional honors include the George Polk Memorial Award for National Reporting, the University of Missouri Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, and the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association John V. Field Award for Outstanding Service to Scholastic Journalism.

He will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree.

White, who began his academic career in 1955 as an instructor at Wayne State University, is the University Professor and Professor of History of Consciousness (Emeritus) at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is recognized for his scholarly work to unite historiography and literary criticism into a broader reflection on narrative and cultural understanding.

He taught at the University of Rochester from 1958 to 1968, serving as chair of the Department of History there in 1962-64. He was professor of history at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1968-73. He was director of the Center for Humanities, Wesleyan University, in 1973-76 and the Kenan Professor of History and Letters there in 1976-78. He went to the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1978.

White will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree.