Murray Kempton, for more than 50 years you have treated your fellow New Yorkers to commentary on everything from Socrates to scat singing to Carmine "The Snake" Persico. You are a reporter. Your attention to the tools of that trade—getting out on the street, into the courts, down to City Hall, getting around—has netted you scoop after scoop in an extraordinarily competitive news town. You are a scholar. Who else could find allusions to Greek mythology at the Bronx Surrogate Court? You are a gentleman. Your kindness and generosity to colleagues and your courtliness in all arenas are legendary.

And, after a singular career writing for the opinion pages of The New York Post and Newsday, you are, as you morosely put it to your friend, columnist Jim Dwyer, "the Elder Murray Kempton." It is a mark of your unwarranted but truly felt modesty that you find that Murray Kempton—with his Pulitzer, his two George Polk awards, his National Book Award, his Grammy and his membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters—irritating. Fortunately, the rest of us find him intellectually challenging, insightful and even heroic.

It is with great respect and pleasure that tonight we recognize you as the 43rd Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award recipient and honor you in the name of this College and of its courageous son.

By the authority of the Board of Trustees of Colby College, I confer upon you, Murray Kempton, the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. The hood with which you have been invested and this diploma which I place in your hand are visible symbols of your membership in this society of scholars, to all the rights and privileges of which I declare you entitled.