Two Extraordinary Women with U of A Connections to Receive Honorary Degrees at Fall Commencement

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Sister Helen Prejean and Frances James.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Sister Helen Prejean, the death penalty opponent who participated in a panel on peace and non-violence with His Holiness the Dalai Lama at the University of Arkansas in May 2011, and Frances James, an internationally known researcher and one of the first women to receive a doctorate in biological sciences at the U of A, will each be recognized with honorary degrees during the university’s fall commencement ceremony.

The event will be held at 9 a.m., Saturday, Dec. 21, in Barnhill Arena.

Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account to the Death Penalty in the United States, is an internationally known advocate for ending capital punishment. She will receive a doctor of arts and humane letters degree.

James, a groundbreaking researcher in ornithology and ecology, will receive a doctor of arts and sciences degree.

“It is a tremendous privilege to be able to honor two such extraordinary women,” said Chancellor G. David Gearhart. “Sister Helen Prejean’s visit to the university in 2011 made a positive impact on everyone who heard or met her, an impact that mirrors, on a smaller scale, the impact she has had on people around the world. She not only wrote Dead Man Walking – she lived it. Sister Helen is more than this country’s foremost advocate against the death penalty. She is a woman whose compassion, courage, dedication and humanity have earned the respect of people on both sides of this important issue.

“Dr. Frances James has made her mark in a much less public field – scientific research,” Gearhart continued. “She was one of the first two women to earn a doctorate in zoology from the University of Arkansas. Her groundbreaking research work while here is considered a classic in the field of avian ecology, but she also broke ground as a woman working in science. She made important contributions to both ornithology and ecology during her career on the faculty of Florida State University. She has an international reputation and has received many honors from her peers, not least being the first Distinguished Alumni Award from our own department of biological sciences.”

Both women will address graduates during the fall commencement ceremony.

Sister Helen Prejean

Sister Helen Prejean first visited the University of Arkansas on May 11, 2011, to take part in a panel discussion on the subject “Turning Swords into Ploughshares: The Many Paths of Non-Violence.” The panel included His Holiness the Dalai Lama and civil rights activist Vincent Harding. During the discussion, Prejean brought her practical and spiritual experience as an opponent of the death penalty to the broader discussion of non-violence as a way of life.

Prejean is probably the best-known American advocate for ending capital punishment worldwide. She is the author of Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States (1993), which spent 31 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list and has been translated into 10 languages. The book was adapted into a movie, an opera and a play for high school and college students.

Prejean was born in Baton Rouge, La. and is a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph. She spent her first years as a teacher before deciding to dedicate herself to working with the poor. She moved into the St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans and worked at Hope House from 1981-84. During this time, she was asked to correspond with a death row inmate, Patrick Sonnier, at Angola prison. She agreed and later visited him, eventually becoming his spiritual adviser. At the same time, she reached out to the families of his victims. She wrote Dead Man Walking after witnessing Sonnier’s execution; in it she portrays the human complexity of capital punishment and makes the case that the death penalty is essentially immoral.

Prejean has continued her prison ministry, both counseling inmates on death row and the families of murder victims. She has accompanied six more men to their executions, and was convinced that at least two of these men were innocent. She wrote her second book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions (2004), to argue that flaws in the legal system make the death penalty unjust as well as immoral.

Prejean has been a member of several national and international organizations working to abolish the death penalty. In 2000, Prejean and two other death penalty opponents presented Kofi Annan, then secretary general of the United Nations, with a petition calling for a moratorium on capital punishment. It had 2.5 million signatures collected from around the world.

Prejean has been instrumental in helping to shape the Catholic Church’s newly vigorous opposition to state executions. She travels around the world giving talks about her ministry, and she has been working for several years on her spiritual autobiography, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey.

Frances James

Frances James is one of the most highly regarded ornithologists and ecologists of the past 50 years. She had recently earned her doctorate in zoology at the University of Arkansas and was working as a researcher at the University Museum in 1971 when she authored a research paper that is considered a classic in the field of avian ecology. She pioneered the use of complex statistical analysis, combined with meticulous fieldwork and observation, to make discoveries into the relationships between birds and their habitats.

James developed her fascination with nature, and particularly with birds, as a girl growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology from Mt. Holyoke College in 1952, followed by a master’s in zoology from Louisiana State University in 1956. She moved to Fayetteville with her husband, Douglas James, and put her academic career on hold while raising three daughters. Still, during this time she was active in conservation projects and in studying the birds of Arkansas. In 1965, she decided to earn her doctorate. When she graduated in 1970 she was one of the first two women to earn a doctorate in zoology at the University of Arkansas.

In 1973, James moved to Washington to take a position with the National Science Foundation. She worked full time but also made time to continue doing research. In 1977, she joined the faculty at Florida State University as an associate professor of biological science and curator of birds and mammals. She earned a full professorship in 1984. She was a highly regarded teacher of undergraduate and graduate students, while continuing to pursue her research interests. In 2000, she was named the Pasquale Graziadei Professor of Biological Science, a position she has held as an emerita since her retirement in 2003.

During her retirement she has continued to do research – now focusing on the relationship between birds and dinosaurs.

James has authored or co-authored more than 150 scholarly papers. She was the first woman president of the American Ornithologist’s Union and served as president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. She received the highest awards given by the American Ornithologists’ Union, the Ecological Society of America and the Wilson Ornithological Society.

She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000.

Her public service has ranged from being a member of the board of directors of the World Wildlife Fund and The Nature Conservancy to helping Boy Scouts learn how to build bird houses.

James was the first person to receive a Distinguished Alumni Award from the U of A department of biological sciences. Her ties to the university apparently run deep: a colleague at Florida State has fond memories of James and her daughters patiently teaching him how to “Call the Hogs.”

Those daughters now all have successful professional careers of their own: one as a lawyer, one as an avian paleontologist, and one as a geneticist.