Lonnie G. Bunch III, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., will deliver the 2024 commencement address on June 2. Physician and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee will deliver the College’s Baccalaureate address on June 1.
At the commencement ceremony, Bunch and Mukherjee will receive honorary degrees from the College. Chair of the Williams Board of Trustees Liz Robinson ’90 and Rector of Exeter College at Oxford Sir Richard Trainor will also be awarded honorary degrees, though they will not speak at the event.
Bunch is the 14th secretary of the Smithsonian, a position he has held since June 2019. He oversees 21 museums, 21 libraries, and the National Zoo, as well as numerous research and education centers. He is the first historian and first African American to lead the Smithsonian in its 173-year history.
Previously, Bunch served as the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. During nearly 14 years in that role, Bunch led the museum from its inception and oversaw its development in its nearly 400,000-square foot space on the National Mall, where it welcomes millions of visitors annually. He was appointed to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House by President George W. Bush and later by President Barack Obama. Bunch holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from American University in Washington, D.C., where he has also taught.
Mukherjee is a hematologist, oncologist, and author. As an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University, he researches the biology of blood development. In 2011, his book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer — a history of cancer treatment and Mukherjee’s personal experiences treating cancer — won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in biology from Stanford, Mukherjee studied as a Rhodes Scholar and earned a doctorate from Oxford before matriculating to Harvard Medical School. He completed his internal medicine residency and an oncology fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Mukherjee was featured in the 2011 Time 100 list of most influential people, and the publication credited his writing with transforming the public discourse on health and medicine.
Robinson and Trainor will not speak at commencement ceremonies, but they will receive honorary degrees from the College. Robinson graduated from the College in 1990 with a degree in economics. She retired in 2016 from Goldman Sachs after 25 years at the firm and now serves as chair of the Williams Board of Trustees. Trainor became Rector of Exeter College at Oxford in 2014. As a historian at the University of Glasgow for 21 years, Trainor lectured in the Department of Economic History before becoming Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and then Vice Principal. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2010 for his services to higher education.
