Harvard Commencement 2001 photo gallery
Image gallery

During the calm before the storm, a worker sets up signs to direct graduates to their house seats.

Behind University Hall, Alexandre Houck ’87 (left) and Latonya Wright ’00, contribute a clashing of cymbals to the joyful caophony.

A graduate student takes a glimpse at what’s in store “out there”

Lenora Rojas listens to Commencement speakers while balancing her daughter Lucia on her lap

Emilou MacLean of the School of Public Health has her hands full with an oversize globe at the conclusion of morning ceremonies

Commencement speaker Robert Rubin makes finishing touches to his speech on the steps of Widener Library.

President Neil L. Rudenstine gives a round of applause.

Two members of the class of 2001 jump from the Weeks Foot Bridge into the Charles River, a Commencement Morning tradition.

Ian Tzeng (Class of ’98) writes a congratulatory letter to a friend while waiting in the early morning line to enter Harvard Yard.


John Thomasson, also known as “Frisbay,” leads a group of seniors from Dudley House up to breakfast.

Singing “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” at Morning services are, from left, Oliver Luisi, Dana Sprong, Roger Backes, and Rick Butters of Adams House

Tina Hsiao (left) and Yen Liow of the Business School photograph the crowd from the stage before the Morning Exercises.

Commencement speaker Robert Rubin, left, speaks with President Elect Lawrence H. Summers, center, and Professor Michael Porter from the Harvard Business School prior to commencement excercises.

Commencement speaker Robert Rubin, left, chats with President Neil L.Rudenstine outside Mass. Hall before the processional into Tercentenary Theatre

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Margaret Marshall chats with Professor Emeritus Elliot Forbes.


Jaissa Feliz ’12 (left) meets with President Drew Faust, during the president’s trip to São Paulo, Brazil. Feliz is studying in Brazil.

Marshal’s Aide Daniel Sanks helps clear the aisles for the processional.

Students line up in front of widener library in preparation for the processional.

President Drew Faust looks at a painting called “Mestico, 1934” by Candido Portinar in the Pinacoteca Museum.

Kyle Freeny rests briefly on the shoulder of her friend and housemate Christine Chavez.

A Class Marshall closes his eyes to concentrate on the Latin Oration.

Middlesex County Sheriff James V. DiPaola presented former Vice President Al Gore and wife Tipper with a proclamation honoring Sarah Gore for her graduation. Gore and DiPaola are old friends.

President Drew Faust visited the main building of the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, where curators guided her on a brief tour of major works from the museum’s collections.

During her visit to São Paulo, Brazil, President Faust made a stop in the Mercado Municipal Market.


Harvard graduate Joanne Peart holds her young cousin Yannic Williams, age 2, both of New York, as they celebrate after the morning ceremonies.

Ruhul Abid will receive the American Heart Association’s 2011 Werner Risau New Investigator Award in Vascular Biology on April 29 in Chicago for his groundbreaking work.

William Shurcliff ’30 and his wife Joan observe the crowds.

Nahoko Harada (from left), Kohei Hasegawa, Takashi Shiga, city resident (and kitchen organizer) Shota Miura, and N. Stuart Harris stand outside the Kesennuma middle school that housed an ad-hoc emergency clinic.

A wrecked fishing vessel, swept inland by the tsunami, perches on a roadway on a sea-level peninsula in Kesennuma. Before the disaster this fishing center was the shark fin capital of Japan.

Jack Gardner ’45 (left), Joseph Minott ’45 (center), and Bill Barron ’45 listen to Robert Rubin during the Afternoon Exercises.

Neil Rudenstine and Lawrence Summers chat after the Afternoon Exercises

John Filios, of the Bedford Minuteman Company, Bedford, MA leadsstudents into the Memorial Church for a senior class chapel service.

Graduating students form an expectant gauntlet through which a parade of dignitaries will soon pass.

The gymnasium of a middle school in Kesennuma, where 500 residents made homeless by the tsunami bedded down every night. The school nurse’s office was the site of a temporary emergency room and clinic.

Paul Smith, supervisor of landscape services and facilities maintenance operations, rings the Memorial Church bell during Morning Exercises. He is flanked by landscaper Bernie Toland (left) and horticulturalist John Caroll.

Jen Lee (left), Haley Joel, (center) and Melissa Crandall (right) wear smiley balloons on their mortar boards, “so our parents can see us.”

In the Buddhist temple in Kesennuma — a temporary hospital after the disaster — an elderly man lies down, suffering without his medications. To the far left is Harvard-affiliated emergency physician Takashi Shiga. To the far right is Japanese-born nurse practitioner Nahoko Harada, a pre-doctoral fellow at Boston College.

Mud, trash, and wrecked houses were swept a mile inland by the tsunami that struck Kesennuma and a swath of coastal Japan. Nearby, a Buddhist temple stood untouched. It was on land a mere foot higher in elevation.