An associate justice of the California Supreme Court, a humanitarian promoting international peace, justice and human rights, and a scholar and author of bestselling books on democracy and state-building will address more than 400 graduates and their guests at the Pomona College Commencement on May 17. These speakers, selected by the Board of Trustees’ honorary degree committee, will also receive honorary doctorates in recognition of their extraordinary achievements and commitment to public service.
Goodwin Liu is an associate justice of the California Supreme Court. He was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown in 2011 and retained by the electorate in 2014 and 2022. Before joining the court, he was professor of law and associate dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. An expert on constitutional law, education law and policy, and diversity in the legal profession, he continues to teach as a visiting professor at Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford law schools.
The son of immigrants from Taiwan, Liu grew up and attended public schools in Sacramento. He received his bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and earned a master’s degree at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. After graduating from Yale Law School, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Liu is an elected member and chair of the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is also an elected member of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Law Institute, where he serves on its governing council. He previously served as special assistant to the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Education and helped launch the AmeriCorps national service program at the Corporation for National Service.
Jane Olson has traveled the world as a volunteer with organizations dedicated to humanitarian work and the promotion of human rights. Her endeavors have taken her to Nicaragua and El Salvador during the Contra Wars, Bosnia during the 1990s ethnic cleansing, and the Caucasus region, also in the 1990s, during conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, Olson’s work has focused on landmines, HIV/AIDS, the condition of refugees, human rights abuse, and the suffering caused by conflict and extreme poverty. She published the book World Citizen, Journeys of a Humanitarian in 2022.
From 2004 to 2010, Olson chaired the International Board of Trustees of Human Rights Watch, an organization on whose behalf she has worked since 1988. She was the founding chair of the board of Landmine Survivors Network/Survivor Corps and served as co-chair of the Women’s Refugee Commission in New York, which she continues to support as a commissioner.
Olson was honored with the inaugural Alison Des Forges Award from Human Rights Watch in 2010 and in 2005 was the first recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Award from Feminist Majority. She received an honorary doctorate from California Lutheran University in 2003. Olson is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Daniel Ziblatt ’95 is the Eaton Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he also directs the university’s Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. In addition, he leads a research group on democracy and democratic erosion at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center in Germany.
Ziblatt and co-author Steven Levitsky have published two New York Times bestselling books. How Democracies Die (2018), which The Economist called “the most important book of the Trump era,” has been translated into more than 30 languages. The Tyranny of the Minority (2023) shows the distinctive vulnerabilities of the U.S. constitutional order in the context of the country’s transition into a multiracial democracy.
In Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy (2017), Ziblatt traces the history of democracy in 19th and 20th century Europe. It won the American Political Science Association’s Woodrow Wilson Prize as the best book in government and international relations. He also authored Structuring the State: The Formation of Italy and Germany and the Puzzle of Federalism (2006).
Ziblatt’s writing appears frequently in journals such as the American Political Science Review and World Politics and in media such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post and Die Zeit. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
The 133rd Commencement at Pomona College will take place on Marston Quad. During the ceremony, the College will recognize the graduating seniors who have demonstrated the highest academic achievement with the Rena Gurley Archibald High Prize. Winners of the Wig Distinguished Professor awards will also be announced.
The ceremony concludes Commencement weekend, which includes traditions such as department receptions, the class photo and the Senior Parade, where graduating seniors pass an inscription penned by the fourth president of Pomona College, James Blaisdell: “They only are loyal to this college who departing bear their added riches in trust for mankind.”