Eight distinguished achievers, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Spike Lee to receive Johns Hopkins honorary degrees

Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, United States has announced a list of eight distinguished achievers who will receive honorary degrees this year. The honorary degree will be conferred at the university wide commencement ceremony on May 18 at Royal Farms Arena.

The list includes award-winning novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who earned a prestigious creative writing master’s from the university,  filmmaker Spike Lee, Nobel Prize winner Richard Axel and Ellen M Heller, Maryland’s first woman to become an administrative Circuit Court judge.

“The men and women in this group are visionaries who have challenged the status quo and changed the world for the better,” Said John Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels. “They have made a lasting impact on the arts, public health, the law, neuroscience, and the resilience of communities here in Baltimore and across the globe. At Johns Hopkins, we share their commitment to innovate and to work for the benefit of humankind, and I’m so pleased that these honorary degrees will celebrate all they have accomplished.”

The author of acclaimed novels including Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 2013, Adichie writes stories inspired by her own life in Nigeria and the United States. She earned a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins’ Writing Seminars in 2003 and won a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 2008.

Richard Axel: Axel was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004 for work on how the brain deciphers the world of smell—research he did with his colleague, Linda Buck. He continues to study olfactory perception as a University Professor and as an investigator at the Columbia University Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Susan Baker: Founder of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy, Baker is the author of the Injury Fact Book and is known for developing the Injury Severity Score, a system used to assess patients with multiple injuries. She has tirelessly advocated for life-saving tools that, thanks to her efforts, are now common, including airbags and child-safety caps.

Ellen M Heller: The first woman appointed to be Maryland’s Administrative Circuit Court judge, Heller introduced court-ordered mediation for some civil cases, allowing them to be resolved faster and more affordably than through a trial. She recently concluded her term as trustee and chair of the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation. She graduated with honors from Johns Hopkins in 1972.

Shelton Jackson (Spike) Lee: The filmmaker whose acclaimed works include Do The Right Thing and Jungle Fever is also a writer, director, actor, producer, author, educator, and entrepreneur. The founder of 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, Lee’s work is known for challenging assumptions about race and prejudice. He is also this year’s commencement speaker at Johns Hopkins.

Judith Rodin: Rodin is the president of The Rockefeller Foundation, an organization focused on building greater resilience and more inclusive economies. A former psychology professor, she served as provost of Yale and as the first woman president in the Ivy League at the University of Pennsylvania, her alma mater.

Shale Stiller: An eminent trial attorney and a partner at DLA Piper, Stiller was a leader in the comprehensive revision of the Code of Maryland (Statutes). He has been at the forefront of recent high-profile successful litigation against Iran, and has been named in every edition of The Best Lawyers in America since it was first published in 1987. An adjunct professor at the University of Maryland Law School for 53 years, Stiller earned a master of liberal arts degree with honors at Johns Hopkins in 1977.

Laurie Zabin: The founding director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health, Zabin has led public health initiatives in developing nations. A former Planned Parenthood director, Zabin, who has a PhD from the Bloomberg School of Public Health, is also an expert on teen pregnancy and reproductive rights.

Source: John Hopkins University’s The Hub