BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | There was quite a lineup at Yankee Stadium last Wednesday morning — but only one of them was actually a baseball player.
The occasion was New York University’s 182nd commencement at the House That Jeter Built. Having outgrown its former commencement venue, Washington Square Park, N.Y.U. has held its graduation at the Bronx stadium since 2008.
Around 8,000 students received undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees at the morning ceremony, which was attended by 25,000 guests, as well as alumni, faculty and other N.Y.U. community members.
The star-studded lineup — each of whom received an honorary degree from the Greenwich Village university — included Janet Yellen, chairperson of the Federal Reserve; Mariano Rivera, the Yanks’ former relief pitching ace; Elena Kagan, the U.S. Supreme Court justice; Aretha Franklin, the “Queen of Soul”; and Martin Edelman, an international and real estate attorney.
Commencement speaker Yellen told the grads to expect failure as well as success.
“Even Ruth, Gehrig and DiMaggio failed most of the time when they stepped to the plate,” she said. “My Federal Reserve colleagues and I experienced this as we struggled to address a financial and economic crisis that threatened the global economy.”
She praised Ben Bernanke’s leadership of the Fed during the recession.
N.Y.U. President John Sexton and Martin Lipton, chairperson of the N.Y.U. board of trustees, officiated.
The 2014 Lewis Rudin Award for Exemplary Service to New York City was presented to Daniel Doctoroff, president and C.E.O. of Bloomberg, L.P., “in recognition of his superb record of service to the city as deputy mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding during the Bloomberg administration and his leadership in making New York the vibrant capital of creativity and culture that it is today.”
Sexton told the students, “The challenges that confront your generation — climate change and sustainable energy sources, political and religious extremism, poverty — are complex and daunting. They require women and men with a global outlook who are prepared to act with courage, with thoughtfulness, with resolve and with wisdom.
“Our duty as a university is to help give you, our students, the tools you need — the understanding, the knowledge, the critical-thinking skills — to take on these challenges and to make the world a better place.”
The student speaker was Corey Blay, who graduated with a dual M.B.A./M.P.A. degree from Stern School of Business and Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Blay previously taught history at Fieldston, where he also planned a middle school and founded a youth advocacy organization in Harlem. Blay was a student representative on N.Y.U.’s University Space Priorities Working Group. His ambition is to build a private middle school in Upper Manhattan for young men of color.
