Honorary Degrees of Retiring Faculty
Miriam Clapp Duncan, Professor of Music, 1985
"Miriam Clapp Duncan, organist, harpsichordist, musicologist--but most of all, Renaissance woman--you have found your muse in Plato's Republic, and have given it voice in Freshman Studies, at keyboards of organs and harpsichords throughout the United States and Europe, and at the Lawrence London Center, from which you have just returned.
In studio, concert hall, classroom, and lecture hall, you have enlightened and enlivened the lives of students and colleagues with explanations of music that exude the crispness of a couplet by Alexander Pope, and you have employed that same wisdom and wit in exegeses of As I Lay Dying by using language no less precise than that of the great contrapuntalists.
But your contributions evince more than the power of music, language, and critical insight. The liberal arts have molded you, and at Lawrence, you have helped to mold them. When you ask, as you often have, 'Do we teach our students to think well?,' you have embodied and articulated as a teacher and colleague what you have referred to as the 'moral imperative' of teaching. Yours has been an aspiration of excellence. Lawrence University is proud to honor you today, recognizing that in your career, music has been a liberal art that you have sought to liberate further.
By the authority vested in me, I now confer upon you the degree of Master of Arts, ad eundem, and admit you to its rights, its privileges, and its obligations."
