Josh Radnor ’96 — a veteran of Broadway, film and television as well as a singer-songwriter — was among three individuals honored with honorary degrees during Honors Day ceremonies held April 16 in Rosse Hall.
The actor, who received a doctor of fine arts, was joined by fellow alumnus, Steven Fischman ’63, a lawyer, real estate developer, former Kenyon trustee and philanthropist who received a doctor of law.
Karen Buchwald Wright P’05 '09, a Knox County industrialist and philanthropist and former Kenyon trustee, was presented a doctor of humane letters in absentia due to ongoing health issues.
The following are the prepared texts of remarks delivered by the 2024 alumni honorary doctorate recipients.
Josh Radnor ’96
Thank you. It’s so wonderful to be here. Thank you to the Kenyon faculty and Board of Trustees, to President Kornfield. And my former professor and forever friend Peter Rutkoff.
In high school, I had a host of romantic ideas about what a college experience should look like: I wanted gothic buildings, majestic trees, stained glass windows in the dining hall, lawns upon which to sprawl while reading great works of literature. So I applied early decision to the liberal arts college of my dreams: Williams College in Massachusetts.
I didn’t get in.
At the time I was heartbroken. Like many high school seniors I was in a state of near-constant anxiety about where I would go to college, certain that the right choice would make my life and the wrong one would break it. I had been a very good student my whole life and had no context then for viewing failure and setback as course corrections and learning experiences. I simply felt rejected.
After not getting into Williams I applied to a number of other very excellent liberal arts colleges on the East Coast and one in central Ohio called Kenyon.
By that point I had fallen in deep intoxicating love with acting so any college I attended would need to have a vibrant theater department. Kenyon happened to have one. And yes, it had the gothic architecture and the trees and stained glass windows. But it also had two big knocks against it. The first: it was an hour’s drive door to door from my childhood home in Columbus. I worried that staying in Ohio for college would signify some inability to fly fully from the nest. The second knock against it: My father was a 1967 graduate. Like many a teenager, I wanted to chart my own course.
One day during my senior year, I was driving my father’s 1979 Honda Civic hatchback home after school and on a tree-lined street a few blocks from the high school I heard what I will describe — for lack of a better word — as a voice. This is what the voice said:
“If you go to Kenyon you’ll be an actor.”
Now this ‘hearing voices’ thing is extremely tricky business. It could be argued that we’re hearing and obeying voices in our heads all day long: neurotic thoughts on loop, micro and macro judgments and opinions pinging about, our stomach’s demands for lunch. Addictions, compulsions, and plenty of woefully bad ideas also tend to speak in a kind of internal voice.
All I can say is this one felt different. Was it an actual voice I heard from some exogenous entity? Or simply my intuition, a faint whispering from some inner GPS? Or even my most extravagant hope assuming some sort of authoritative voice. I’m not sure. Whatever its provenance, it was startling. And felt, in that moment, inarguably true.
I trusted the nudge. I said yes to Kenyon College that next fall and spent four very happy and transformative years here. I found my voice and confidence as an actor under the guidance of the great Harlene Marley, I learned of the noble and ancient theatrical tradition I was joining from the wise and erudite Tom Turgeon, I awoke to the roiling paradoxes of what it means to be an American in Peter Rutkoff’s electric history classes. I studied Shakespeare with the endlessly insightful Sergei Lobonov-Rostovsky and the romantic poets in Ron Sharp’s indispensable British Romantic Literature class. I improvised and wrote sketch comedy with The Fools on The Hill. I forged friendships that endure to this day.
After graduation I headed to New York City. It’ll be 25 years this May since I graduated from NYU’s Graduate Acting Program, 25 years that I’ve made my living as a professional actor.
So the voice was right.
My heart was surely engaged at Kenyon but I was a heady undergraduate. I overthought everything and was certain that any problem could be cracked if I just thought long and hard enough about it from every possible angle. A college campus isn’t the worst place for an overthinker. The mind, especially in academia, reigns supreme. College is like taking your brain to the gym every day and when you leave, you’re (hopefully) well-equipped to navigate a society that is itself intensely rational. But there comes a time in every life — and as far as I can tell this is non-negotiable — where pain, grief, and confusion grow so vast that they overtake us. The mind ceases to provide answers, direction, or solace. Only mystery, grace, forgiveness, and mercy remain.
I’m not advocating we reject or dismiss the utility and necessity of mind, only that we have it in its proper place. As David Foster Wallace wrote in his now-famous Kenyon commencement address: “The mind is a wonderful servant and a terrible master.”
I’m so grateful to have attended this college, where my mind got such a good workout. And I’m grateful for the years since when that mind hit dead ends and locked doors and I was forced to look and listen for guidance elsewhere.
Life doesn’t make as much sense as I thought it would when I was 21 or continue to hope it will at 49. It is often maddening, confusing, overwhelming and unjust. But there are moments when a clear and steady voice of clarity bursts through the noise. Sometimes the voice comes unbidden, when we’re driving home from high school. Other times we consciously connect with it through moments of quiet, solitude, and reflection. Maybe it’s whispering to us all the time and we only occasionally tune to its frequency.
I do know that the very best decisions in my life have been the result of contact with this wise, benevolent voice, of dropping the best laid plans of the mind in favor of the guidance of the heart.
I continue to be astonished that a 17-year old boy from Ohio had such deeply good instincts about what to do with his life and which college would best set him on a path towards that life. His mind said “Go hundreds of miles east.” His heart said “Go an hour north. Go to Kenyon.”
Steven Fischman ’63
Recently I had an opportunity to sit with Kenyon’s great new president, Julie Kornfeld. It seemed so clear to me that President Kornfeld really understands Kenyon and what distinguishes it. During that conversation we both realized that we shared a unique childhood experience — we both lost our fathers when we were kids and we were uniquely able to share the magnitude of that experience — we were different in that way from our friends — we were seen as the kid without a father. It is so powerful a loss that in some ways is always there — the memory of that change remains. Up until that time I was sort of carefree, but that changed — school was more important, worrying about the future more germane, an inner voice told me, “Now it is up to you.” When my dad died, my brother, Don, (who became a distinguished scientist and a past recipient of a Kenyon Honorary Degree) was still a Kenyon undergraduate. I remember, powerfully, how impressed my dad was with Kenyon — a long way from his parents’ immigrant home in Brooklyn, where only Yiddish was spoken, and a long way from Queens where we then lived.
At my brother’s graduation I couldn’t help being totally impressed too. He was a distinguished student and — although I was a good student — I sort of assumed Kenyon was willing to take a chance on me because of his record. So, I was determined to do everything I could to help myself — I secured a single room in the freshmen dorms to avoid distractions and I studied hard. I took advantage of everything Kenyon had to offer. As a history major — Professors Ritcheson, Warner and Baker took me under their wings. And I developed lasting friendships — for example with Steve Weingrad, Dave Dawson, Joe Adkins and Joel Kellman — all here today.
Kenyon taught me to enjoy literature and to write well, which has benefited my legal career, my subsequent career in commercial real estate, and has enriched my life.
I realize retrospectively that my first years at Kenyon were significant, not only for me, but for our country. We watched anxiously the Kennedy/Nixon debates and celebrated Kennedy’s victory — seeing in him a new generation of leader. When JFK called upon us to “ask what we could do for our country,” I followed — and joined the newly established Peace Corps. What a huge step for this frightened kid, without a father, to go away for two years in the Andes Mountain in the south of Colombia, where running water and electricity were novelties. And like most Peace Corps volunteers, we learned more than we taught.
I clearly remember the day in November of 1963 when we heard that JFK had been assassinated. Although people in our village knew little about Kennedy — they knew he was Catholic and in very Catholic Colombia that was extremely important. Just about everyone in our town lined up to pay respects to us — the only Americans they ever knew. The only downside was they expected us to have a drink of the potent local liquor with each of them.
My wife, Nancy and my kids understand the influence Kenyon has had on me and I’d like my grandkids to understand that too. They know that I’ve had my share of business success. But coming to Gambier today, I want them also to see that my service and leadership in many charitable organizations and my deep concern for those less fortunate, not only comes from my heritage, but also from this wonderful liberal arts education, where learning, studying, debating and listening are so cherished.
That commitment to society also defines what it meant to me to grow up Jewish in America. I’ve always felt that, as Jews, we have a special obligation to stand up for the poor, the weak, the forgotten, those discriminated against. Who else, given our history, should better understand the plight of the less fortunate? And Jews in prior generations have supported progressive causes including workers' rights, civil rights, voting rights, immigrants' rights. We have so benefitted as immigrants from the incredible opportunities in America that our success requires that we redouble our efforts and continue to provide allyship and support to others. I had the good fortune to be involved as a leader of Jewish Funds for Justice — now Bend the Arc foundation — a Jewish philanthropy dedicated to pursuing social justice on a non-sectarian basis. We supported locally-based organizations — one of our earliest grants was to a young Barack Obama pursuing community organizing in Chicago. When Katrina left the poorest New Orleans communities, including historic Black neighborhoods, destroyed, Bend the Arc was the only Jewish organization positioned to help. We successfully raised funds and assured that strategic grants were made for the benefit of small Black businesses and homes destroyed by Katrina.
Repairing society feels to me part of our obligation to one another. It certainly came from my studies at Kenyon, but also from my experiences in life.
And, yet, I know we live in challenging times. A wise friend of mine is spending a major part of his career bridging divisions in our society. As a labor union advisor, he was asked to meet with a union local in Michigan — made up of prison workers. The prison workers are Trump supporters, pretty far to the right of his own experience, and their world seemed like an entirely different country. But over time, he came to respect them for how they care deeply about their families, the education of their kids, earning a living, being with friends, etc. In fact, he saw their lives as equally meaningful as his Upper West Side community in New York. On returning to New York City, he spoke to his rabbi about bringing the congregants to Michigan and forging an encounter between these two different worlds. The rabbi agreed. At the first meeting in Michigan, one worker described his job in the prison, always needing a partner nearby, the chill that came with the clanging of the door behind them. A woman from the Upper West Side was shaken and asked why the speaker would take such a job and the obvious answer was to support his family. That silly question broke the ice; it showed that, notwithstanding political differences, the two groups had some basic things in common. Like my wise friend, I pray there is hope in our society.
In the spirit of hope, I am very thankful for the great honor bestowed on me today. The inner me is still asking insecurely, can it really be me they are honoring?
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