Nobel Prize Winner Delivers Speech on Rationality
Posted by kpm43
Awaiting their diplomas, graduate students crowded Healy Lawn. They sat through their ceremony with hopes that rain would hold off.
Speaker Daniel Kahneman — senior scholar, Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University — found it to be a great honor to join the graduates on this joyous occasion. [Watch video of Prof. Kahnman's address]
WATCH THE WEBCAST OF THE ENTIRE COMMENCEMENT CEREMONY
Best known as one of two non-economists to ever receive the Nobel Prize in economics, Kahneman spoke about the subject he knows best: human judgment and decision-making. Touching mostly on the notion of rationality, Kahneman taught the graduates a lesson on how people actually make decisions and how decisions are shaped by the way that questions are put.
In recognition of his achievements — for bringing psychological models to bear on fields as diverse as economics, international affairs, and statistics and providing us with new ways of thinking, Georgetown presented Kahneman with the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters at the graduation ceremony today.
Dana Luciano, associate professor of English, was also honored today with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ Distinguished Achievement in Research Award for her receipt of the Modern Language Association’s 2008 First Book Prize. The prize recognizes the excellence of her book, “Arranging Grief: Sacred Time and the Body in Nineteenth-Century America” (New York University Press, 2007).
