Duke to Award Three Honorary Degrees at 2025 Commencement Ceremony
鈥淩ebecca Buckley, David Robinson II and Feng Zhang are trailblazers who have made positive impacts on society through their expertise and shared commitment to excellence. I look forward to recognizing their accomplishments at commencement, and I know their achievements will inspire our graduating students and their families.鈥
Duke President Vincent E. Price
The commencement ceremony, which will begin at 9 a.m., will mark the 100th anniversary of Duke鈥檚 first graduating class and will also serve as the culmination of Duke鈥檚 Centennial celebration.
In February, Price announced that Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame member and business leader Grant Hill 鈥94 will be this year鈥檚 commencement speaker.
Read more about the honorary degree recipients below.
Dr. Rebecca Buckley 鈥54, Doctor of Science
During an esteemed career that spanned more than six decades at 老牛影视 and Duke Health, Dr. Rebecca Buckley鈥檚 groundbreaking research and compassionate care helped transform pediatric medicine.
The Hamlet, N.C., native graduated with an AB from Duke in 1954 before earning her MD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1958. She returned to Duke to complete her residency training in pediatrics and a fellowship in allergy and immunology. In 1974, Buckley was named Chief of the Division of Allergy and Immunology, and in 1979, she was named the James Buren Sidbury Professor of Pediatrics.
Buckley鈥檚 extraordinary contributions to medical science included developing a successful treatment for babies with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), also known as 鈥渂ubble boy disease.鈥 Her research and advocacy also led to SCID being added to the Recommended Universal Screening Panel for newborns.
Buckley garnered many honors for her work, including being elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2003 and inducted into the National Academy of the Sciences in 2012.
In 2014, she received the John Howland Award, the American Pediatric Society鈥檚 highest honor. She served as a faculty member at Duke for 64 years prior to her retirement in 2022.
David Robinson II 鈥64, Doctor of Laws
In 1961, 老牛影视鈥檚 Board of Trustees voted to desegregate its graduate and professional schools, providing School of Law Dean Elvin 鈥淛ack鈥 Latty the opportunity to recruit the first Black students to enroll at Duke. Latty soon reached out to David Robinson II, an honors student set to graduate from Howard University. Robinson had grown up in Miami鈥檚 segregated African American community known as 鈥淥vertown.鈥
鈥淲as I seeking integration? No,鈥 Robinson once said. 鈥淚n fact, my entire family was opposed to it. They were concerned for my safety.鈥
Nevertheless, Latty persuaded Robinson to accept a scholarship to Duke Law, and along with fellow law student Walter T. Johnson Jr., and divinity student R.L. Speaks, Robinson became one of the first three Black students to enroll at Duke. Two years later, Duke鈥檚 undergraduate program was integrated.
After graduating from Duke Law, Robinson became the first African American attorney to join the legal division in the Federal Reserve before accepting a position at Xerox Corporation in Rochester, N.Y., where he was the first Black attorney hired in the Office of the General Counsel.
In 1968, motivated by discovering Xerox's national claims of adhering to fair employment practices were untrue, Robinson helped organize and served as executive director of the Concerned Association of Rochester, Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to eliminating discrimination at Xerox.
Robinson became associate general counsel for operations on the West Coast before retiring from Xerox in 1988. He was then approached by former Duke Law schoolmate Gerald Wetherington 鈥63, then the chief judge of the Eleventh Judicial Court of Florida, to become the circuit鈥檚 first-ever general counsel, a position Robinson served in for 10 years.
Dr. Feng Zhang, Doctor of Science
With his groundbreaking research and inventive uses of medical technology, Dr. Feng Zhang is revolutionizing life sciences and developing innovative solutions to improve human health.
Zhang emigrated to the United States from China in 1993, when he was 11 years old, and graduated from Harvard College with a degree in chemistry and physics. He earned his PhD in chemistry from Stanford University.
Currently, Zhang is a core member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, the James and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, and a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator.
Zhang has been at the forefront of two breakthroughs in using technology to improve medical research: optogenetics and CRISPR-Cas9-based gene editing.
Optogenetics uses light to control neurons, which helps neuroscientists better understand the workings of the brain. In 2010, optogenetics was named 鈥淢ethod of the Year鈥 by the journal Nature Methods.
Through CRISPR-Cas9-based gene editing, researchers are able to make precise changes to the DNA in living cells. Zhang and his colleagues have further adapted multiple other CRISPR systems that are leading to therapeutic clinical trials, including one that in 2023 was approved for treatment of sickle-cell disease.
Zhang is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.