Liz Cheney, ’96, to Receive Honorary Degree from Dartmouth

Announcing the 2024 Honorary Degree Recipients

April 11, 2024 Dartmouth

Nine remarkable individuals—including a legendary athlete-turned-philanthropist and leaders in artificial intelligence and higher education—will receive honorary degrees at this year’s Commencement ceremony on June 9.

“The common denominator among this year’s diverse and exceptional class of honorands is the outsized impact they each have had as innovators and agents of change in their respective careers and in the world,” says President Sian Leah Beilock. “I am proud to welcome them to Dartmouth.”

Each year prospective honorary degree recipients—scholars, artists, innovators, public servants, philanthropists, and others who have made extraordinary contributions to their respective fields and society at large—are nominated by members of the Dartmouth community. The confidential nominations are reviewed by the Council on Honorary Degrees, which selects the honorands in consultation with the president and the Board of Trustees.

This year, the recipients are:

Joy Buolamwini, a computer scientist, artist, and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League
Liz Cheney, former U.S. representative from Wyoming and vice chair of the House Jan. 6 committee
Mung Chiang, president of Purdue University
Commencement speaker Roger Federer, philanthropist and former tennis champion
Mira Murati, Thayer ’12, chief technology officer of OpenAI
Paul Nakasone, retired director of the National Security Agency and commander, U.S. Cyber Command
Richard Ranger ’74, a retired attorney and current lecturer in the business and law faculties of Uganda Christian University
John Urschel, a mathematician and former Baltimore Ravens guard
Roy Vagelos, philanthropist and retired chairman and CEO of Merck & Co. and retired chairman of Regeneron

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Liz Cheney (Doctor of Laws)

A staunch advocate for democracy, Liz Cheney—who gave the keynote earlier this year at the Democracy Summit, a series conceived by students—is the former U.S. representative from Wyoming who served as vice chair of the select committee investigating Jan. 6. Her bestselling book, Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, gives her first-hand account of what it was like to be in the House of Representatives on that day.

As a member of Congress, Cheney was chair of the House Republican Conference—the third-highest position in the House Republican leadership—and served on the House Armed Services Committee, the China Task Force, the Natural Resources Committee, and the House Committee on Rules.

Before running for office, Cheney served in the U.S. Department of State as principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs and in various roles with State and USAID in Poland, Hungary, Russia, and Ukraine. With her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, she is co-author of Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

Cheney graduated from Colorado College, received her JD from the University of Chicago Law School, and practiced law with White and Case and at the International Finance Corporation. She and her husband, Phil Perry, are the parents of five children.

In 2022, Cheney received the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library’s Profile in Courage Award.