David Bradley '75, David Kennedy '80, and
Iqbal Quadir '81 to Receive Honorary
Degrees at Swarthmore's 139th Commencement

by Alisa Giardinelli
4/11/2011

Swarthmore College President Rebecca Chopp will award honorary degrees to innovative publisher and philanthropist David Bradley '75, acclaimed criminologist David Kennedy '80, and noted entrepreneur and educator Iqbal Quadir '81 at the College's 139th commencement on Sunday, May 29.  About 350 seniors are expected to graduate at the ceremony, which will be held at 10 a.m. in the Scott Outdoor Amphitheater.  

David Bradley '75

David Bradley is the chairman and owner of Atlantic Media Company, which counts the award-winning magazine The Atlantic, as well as The National Journal Group, among its holdings. Its recent initiatives include the Aspen Ideas Festival, an annual gathering of the nation's intellectual leaders, the PBS program Washington Week with Gwen Ifill and National Journal, XM Satellite Radio's National Journal On Air, and The Atlantic Wire.

Before entering the media industry, Bradley founded The Advisory Board Company, which provides management and technological support to the healthcare and education sectors, and The Corporate Executive Board, a consulting firm that counts 85 percent of the Fortune 500 among its clients. With 100,000 applicants each year, the D.C.-based enterprises are the largest employers of young professional talent in the Washington region.

Through their family's CityBridge Foundation, Katherine and David Bradley support two primary program areas: education reform and international healthcare. The Bradleys also established 38 child abuse centers across the Philippines.

Bradley graduated with honors in economics and history from Swarthmore in 1975 and earned an M.B.A. from Harvard University in 1977. He also holds a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and was a Fulbright scholar in Manila. Bradley serves on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, New America Foundation, and KIPP DC, a charter school network in Washington, D.C.

David Kennedy '80

David Kennedy '80, the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control and professor of criminal justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, has garnered national acclaim for the innovative and effective strategies he has designed for law enforcement agencies across the country. Hallmarks of his approach include direct communication with offenders, prior explanation of criminal sanctions, focused moral engagement by community figures, the provision of social service support, and explicit attention to racialized conflict between law enforcement and troubled communities.

Kennedy's work in youth violence, first conducted in concert with the Boston Police Department, led to the Operation Ceasefire intervention that cut youth homicide in Boston by two-thirds and has since been applied in dozens of cities. His work on firearms violence helped identify gun trafficking as a major national problem and led to the national Youth Firearms Interdiction Initiative, which he helped design and launch. Kennedy also developed the "High Point" drug market elimination strategy, named for the community in North Carolina where it was first introduced and which is now being replicated by the Department of Justice.

Kennedy is the author of Deterrence and Crime Prevention: Reconsidering the Prospect of Sanction (2008), co-author of Beyond 911: A New Era for Policing (1990), and a wide range of articles on gang violence, drug markets, domestic violence, firearms trafficking, deterrence theory, and other public safety issues. His next book, Don't Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America, will be published this fall. He is also the co-chair of the National Network for Safe Communities, which is dedicated to reducing crime, reducing incarceration, and addressing the racial conflict associated with traditional crime policy.

Kennedy earned a B.A. from Swarthmore in 1980 with high honors in philosophy and history. Both of his parents and a grandmother are also alums.

Iqbal Quadir '81

Iqbal Quadir '81 is known as an advocate of economic empowerment through commerce and innovations. With GrameenPhone, he introduced commercial telecom services to people in all areas of Bangladesh, including its rural poor. Now that nation's largest cell phone provider, it has become the model for a bottom-up, tech-empowered approach to development. Currently, Quadir heads the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT, which he founded, and is CEO and founder of Emergence BioEnergy Inc., which plans to provide reliable access to power for rural consumers in low-income countries in South Asia and Africa.

After graduating from Swarthmore in 1981, Quadir worked for two years at the World Bank, then in investment banking and venture capital in New York. He moved back to Bangladesh, where he grew up, in 1994 to establish a partnership with Grameen Bank, which helped him effectively distribute telephone services in the country.

From 2001-2004, Quadir was a fellow and lecturer at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he taught the economics of connectivity, the applications of digital technologies in alleviating poverty, and the role of business in development. In his teaching, he often drew lessons from medieval Europe to show how technological progress allowed people to be more productive and led to the dispersion of power and to better governance. He moved to MIT in 2005 and became Professor of Development and Entrepreneurship in 2009.

Iqbal Quadir earned a B.S in engineering with honors from Swarthmore in 1981. He also received an M.A. in applied economics and an M.B.A. in finance from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His brother, Tarik Quadir, is a member of Swarthmore's Class of 1987.