Citation of Honorary Degree Presented to

Author Adam Hochschild -

Adam Hochschild, your concerns about the state of this world and the welfare of its people, especially those marginalized by poverty, racism and political oppression and brutality, have led you on a writer’s journey into some of history’s darkest corners.

Born in New York City, you paid an early visit to South Africa, and later you wrote an extraordinary book, The Mirror of Midnight: A South African Journey, published in 1990; then four years later, in 1994, you wrote Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin. Both books showed, in harrowing detail, the capacity of tyrants and bureaucrats to inflict degradation and death on hundreds, even thousands of victims who usually had no defense and who were often innocent of anything other than being in the way.

At the heart of your writing is the belief that all men, women and children, whatever their circumstance and status, are human beings whose existence must be acknowledged and whose basic rights must be respected. That theme - your life’s work - is expressed with great clarity and force in your 1998 award-winning book, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, which brings to us, as one observer describes it, “the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains.” This megalomaniac, of course, was King Leopold II of Belgium, whose despotic rule and cruelty over the turn of the last century was responsible for the deaths of perhaps eight million people in the Congo. And this horrendous carnage, then hardly a blip on what we would now call the radar screen, was carried out by a man who himself never set foot in Africa!

Significantly, however, there are heroic figures in King Leopold’s Ghost as well, including George Washington Williams, a black American journalist, who reclaims the reader’s hope - and our hope, too-that humankind can be redeemed if only we recognize our common heritage and shared destiny.

Adam Hochschild, in your writings you have looked evil in the eye, and have not flinched and have not despaired. As a gifted writer, never calling attention to yourself, and passionate even in a prose that is sometimes understated, your moral compass resonates on the Curry campus, where concern for the welfare of others is reflected in the lives of Anna Baright Curry and Samuel Silas Curry, our founders, and continues in our mission today. For this we are pleased to have you with us on this very special birthday, and salute you as a deserving recipient of the College’s highest tribute.