Rajendra Pachauri to receive honorary degree at Commencement

Rajendra K. Pachauri

Indian environmentalist Rajendra K. Pachauri will be one of seven distinguished individuals receiving honorary degrees as part of the Brandeis Commencement exercises on May 17. He will be given the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. Pachauri will also deliver the Heller School Commencement Address.

Pachauri serves as director general of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), an organization in New Delhi dedicated to research and the promotion of environmental sustainability. He holds a master’s degree in industrial engineering and PhDs in industrial engineering and economics from North Carolina State University, where he also served as a member of the faculty. In 1981–82, he was a visiting professor of resource economics at West Virginia University and a senior visiting fellow at the Resource Systems Institute, East-West Center, in Honolulu. The author of some 23 books, he has also written more than 100 articles for academic journals.

Since he joined TERI in 1982, it has become one of the best-known research institutes in the world. Since 2002, Pachauri has chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, where he spearheaded the production of its fourth and most challenging assessment report. He has also served the government of India as a member of the prime minister’s Economic Advisory Council, Advisory Board on Energy, and Council on Climate Change, a scientific intergovernmental body that provides policymakers an objective analysis of climate change.

The recipient of many global honors, he was awarded India’s Padma Bhushan for his service to the environment and received the country’s second-highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan. In 2006, the Government of France awarded him the Legion of Honor medal, and in 2007 he was co-recipient with Al Gore of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The other honorary degree recipients include renowned conductor James Conlon, famed opera singer Marilyn Horne, choreographer Bill T. Jones, Holocaust survivor and scholar Israel Gutman, Israeli entrepreneur and industrialist Stef Wertheimer, and Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker.

For more information on the honorary degree recipients, or Commencement 2009, visit the Commencement Web site.