Today, Mayor Shirley Franklin was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Mayor Franklin earned her master’s degree in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969.
Other honorary degree recipients include James A. Baker III, a co-chair of the Iraq Study Group who has served as secretary of state and secretary of treasury; Aaron Temkin Beck, a Penn researcher best known for his work in cognitive therapy; historian Caroline W. Bynum, a professor credited with creating a paradigm for the study of medieval women's piety; physicist Mildred Dresselhaus; singer Aretha Franklin; and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.