Honor Society Inducts New Members

Public radio humorist Garrison Keillor delivered a witty, self-effacing oration at Phi Beta Kappa’s literary exercises yesterday, bringing folksy humor to the 211th annual ceremony honoring Harvard’s inductees into the country’s oldest undergraduate honors society.

“I come from a place that does not believe in excellence,” he told this year’s 104 inductees, who were selected for their high grades. “You need somebody to offer you an alternative.”

Keillor, who comes from Anoka, Minn., was an unusual choice to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration, which is usually a serious speech.

Surrounded on the Sander’s Theater stage by University officials in academic robes, Keillor hunched over the microphone in a navy suit, white shirt and red tie. His bright red socks and the white shoelaces on his black sneakers stood out among more formal footwear.

Each year, the literary exercises feature a poem and an oration.

Poet Lucie Brock-Broido, an associate professor at Columbia, marked her third Phi Beta Kappa honor yesterday when she read her poem, “Interrogation.” Inducted in Phi Beta Kappa as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University, she later taught poetry at Harvard for five years—during which she received the society’s teaching prize.

The audience in Sanders Theatre, which filled the mezzanine and spilled over into the balcony, also heard the Commencement Choir sing two anthems and later joined in a rendition of the College hymn, “Fair Harvard,” to close the ceremony.

In introducing Keillor, Professor of Comparative Religion Diana L. Eck referred jokingly to the phrase Keillor uses on his radio variety show “A Prairie Home Companion” to describe the fictional town of Lake Wobegon, Minn.

Every week on his show Keillor tells a story about Lake Wobegon, where he says “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above-average.”

Eck welcomed Keillor to Harvard, where, she said, “As you can see, all the women are strong. All the men are, well, good-looking.” And, stealing a glance at University President Neil L. Rudenstine, she added, “Grade inflation aside, all the students are above-average.”

For much of his monologue, Keillor told a story of childhood that he said invoked “the beauty of indolence, the beauty of ease, which you may have lost track of.”

He poked fun at pretentious academics, making up a story about lunch with his high school class intellectual, who was “committed to excellence on the part of others.”

“I told him a joke involving mucus,” Keillor deadpanned to the crowd. “The timing was perfect.... I made our class intellectual exhale tapioca, great noodles of tapioca.”

He mixed self-deprecating jokes about coming from small-town Minnesota with quips about the problems with “excellent people,” who he suggested often lack a sense of humor and are surrounded by envy.

“Excellent people believe they deserve to be leaders when they don’t necessarily,” he said, adding that they should learn instead about being “ordinary” and being “commoners.”

“It is time for you to think about failure,” he said during a long, comic poem that closed his address. Failure gives people a “sense of mortality,” he added.

“In short, my advice is go and have a crisis,” he said, telling the soon-to-be graduates to “have yourself a beautiful and disastrous summer.”

Keillor and Radcliffe Institute Dean Drew G. Faust, who has won the Parkman Prize for history writing and has been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, were both given honorary Phi Beta Kappa membership yesterday.

The society also honored three instructors who were nominated by Phi Beta Kappa members for excellent teaching.

Mary M. Gaylord, a professor of Romance languages, was cited for her “candor” and “compassion” in teaching a course on Hispanic love lyrics.

Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes was honored for his course, Religion 42: “The Christian Bi0ble and Its Interpretation,” which Gomes is retiring after seven years.

Arnheim Lecturer on Studio Arts Nancy M. Mitchnick was praised for encouraging “concentration” and “risk-taking” in her course called “Painting with Attitude.”

—Staff writer Andrew S. Holbrook can be reached at holbr@fas.harvard.edu.