Rita Dove—recipient of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry and two-time U.S. poet laureate—delivered the address at Smith College’s Commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 20. 

Honorary degrees were awarded to Dove; Carol T. Christ, chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, and president emerita of Smith College; Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Columbia Law School and a leading authority on civil rights, Black feminist theory, and race, racism and the law; Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, an Academy and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker who graduated from Smith in 2002; and Robert L. Pura, who is retiring this year after nearly two decades as president at Greenfield Community College.