Radcliffe Day 2024 | Medal Ceremony | Sonia Sotomayor

On Radcliffe Day 2024—Friday, May 24—we awarded the Radcliffe Medal to Sonia Sotomayor.

Each year, during Harvard University’s commencement week, the Institute awards the Radcliffe Medal to an individual who embodies its commitment to excellence, inclusion, and social impact. First awarded to Lena Horne in 1987, recent honorees include Ophelia Dahl, Sherrilyn Ifill, Melinda French Gates, Dolores Huerta, and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

2024 Medalist
Sonia Sotomayor, an associate justice of the US Supreme Court, was born in Bronx, New York, on June 25, 1954. She earned a BA in 1976 from Princeton University, graduating summa cum laude and a member of Phi Beta Kappa and receiving the Pyne Prize, the highest academic honor Princeton awards to an undergraduate. In 1979, she earned a JD from Yale Law School, where she served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal. She served as assistant district attorney in the New York County District Attorney’s Office from 1979 to 1984. She then litigated international commercial matters in New York City at Pavia & Harcourt, where she served as an associate and then partner from 1984 to 1992. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush nominated her to the US District Court, Southern District of New York, and she served in that role from 1992 to 1998. In 1997, she was nominated by President Bill Clinton to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where she served from 1998 to 2009. President Barack Obama nominated her as an associate justice of the Supreme Court on May 26, 2009, and she assumed this role on August 8, 2009.

Our program includes a testimonial by Rita Moreno, a conversation between 2024 Radcliffe Medalist Sonia Sotomayor and Martha Minow, and the formal award presentation by Tomiko Brown-Nagin.

Speakers:
In more than 80 years in show business, Rita Moreno has won all four of its most prestigious awards: an Oscar, a Tony, two Emmys, and a Grammy. Her credits include countless productions on Broadway and London’s West End, feature films, television shows, and regional theater performances, including her one-woman show, Life without Makeup. Moreno recently starred in the comedy-horror The Prank; the Netflix film Family Switch; the blockbusters Fast X and 80 for Brady; and Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story, for which she also served as executive producer. Her documentary, Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It, debuted at Sundance Film Festival, and she appeared in the Latine reimagining of One Day at a Time. In 2015, Moreno released her first all-Spanish album, Una Vez Más. Her first book, Rita Moreno: A Memoir (Celebra, 2013), was a New York Times bestseller. A recipient of the 2018 Peabody Career Achievement Award and a 2015 Kennedy Center Honor, she was also recognized by her peers with the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. Moreno was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush and the National Medal of Arts by Barack Obama.

Martha Minow EdM ’76, RI ’18 is the 300th Anniversary University Professor and a former dean of Harvard Law School. She is the author, most recently, of Saving the News: Why the Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve Freedom of Speech (Oxford University Press, 2021). Minow’s other books include When Should Law Forgive? (W. W. Norton, 2019), In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Constitutional Landmark (Oxford University Press, 2010), and Just Schools: Pursuing Equality in Societies of Difference (Russell Sage Foundation, 2008). She currently serves as board chair of the MacArthur Foundation and as cochair of the Access to Justice project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Minow received her AB from the University of Michigan, EdM from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and JD from Yale University. Her honors include the 2024 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Law Schools Section on Women in Legal Education; a 2023 Freedom of the Press Career Achievement Award from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the 2016 Robert Sargent Shriver Jr. Award for Equal Justice; and nine honorary degrees.

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0:00 Remarks by Tomiko Brown-Nagin
22:43 Testimonial by Rita Moreno
36:24 Conversation with Sonia Sotomayor and Martha Minow
1:26:49 Presentation of the Radcliffe Medal