Commencement Program - Denison University

Michael H. Armacost, an internationally recognized scholar and
leader in the formulation of U.S. policy in East Asia, has been a
Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow in the Asia/Pacific Research
Center, Institute of International Studies of Stanford University
since 2002. He was also at the Center from 1993 to 1995 as a
Distinguished Senior Fellow and visiting professor.
Dr. Armacost served as president of the Brookings Institution,
the nation’s oldest think tank, in Washington, D.C., from 1995
until 2002, and was a leader in research on politics, government,
international affairs, economics and public policy. During a
distinguished 24-year career in government, he served as Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (1984-1989).
As Ambassador to the Philippines under President Ronald
Reagan (1982-1984), he was a key force in helping that country
undergo a nonviolent transition to democracy. In 1989, President
George H. Bush appointed him Ambassador to Japan, a post that
was considered one of the most important and sensitive U.S.
diplomatic assignments abroad. He served in that capacity until
1993. He also held senior policy responsibilities in the National
Security Council and Department of Defense.
A native of Ohio, Dr. Armacost was educated at Carleton
College, Friedrich Wilhelms University and Columbia University
where he earned master’s and doctoral degrees in public law and
government. He began his career in academia as a professor of
government at Pomona College. In 1969, he was awarded a White
Pam Houston is a prolific, successful and critically acclaimed
author who graduated summa cum laude from Denison in 1983
with a bachelor of arts degree in English. Her books include the
best-selling Cowboys are My Weakness (W.W. Norton, 1992) that
was the winner of the 1993 Western States Book Award and has
been translated into nine languages; Waltzing the Cat (W.W.
Norton, 1998) that won the Willa Award for Contemporary
Fiction, and her first novel, Sighthound, completed in 2003. She
also has published a collection of autobiographical essays A Little
More About Me (W.W. Norton, 1999) and a collaboratively
written historical book Tomboy Bride: A Woman’s Personal Account
of Life in Mining Camps of the West (1997).
Houston edited a collection of essays, fiction and poetry called
Women on Hunting (Ecco Press, 1994) and wrote the text for a
book of photographs by Veronique Vial, Men Before Ten A.M.
(Beyond Words, 1996). Her stories have been selected for the
1999 volumes of Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry
Awards, and the Pushcart Prize. Houston’s The Best Girlfriend
You Never Had was John Updike’s only addition to Best American
Short Stories of the Century when that volume went from hard
cover to paperback in 1999.
Her stories have appeared in Mirabella, Mademoiselle and
the Mississippi Review. Her nonfiction work has appeared in The
New York Times, Elle, Vogue, Travel and Leisure, Ski, Los Angeles
Magazine, and Food and Wine.
HONONARY DEGREE RECIPIENTS
COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER
MICHAEL H. ARMACOST
Doctor of Laws, honoris causa
PAMELA LYNNE HOUSTON ’83
Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa
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House Fellowship and was assigned to the secretary and deputy
secretary of state. Following a stint on the State Department
policy planning and coordination staff, he became a special
assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to Tokyo from 1972-1974, his
first foreign diplomatic post.
Dr. Armacost also has taught and lectured at Georgetown
University, Johns Hopkins University and International Christian
University. He is the author of three books, the most recent of
which, Friends or Rivals?, was published in 1996 and draws on his
experience as Ambassador to Japan. Among his publications by
the Stanford Institute for International Studies are Addressing
the North Korea Nuclear Challenge (2003) and A United States
Policy for the Changing Realities of East Asia: Toward a New
Consensus (1996).
He was the recipient of the President’s Distinguished Service
Award (1987 and 1989), the Defense Department’s Distinguished
Civilian Service Award (1980) and the Secretary of State’s
Distinguished Service Award (1988) in recognition of his
contributions as a specialist in East Asian affairs.
Dr. Armacost is a board member of Carleton College, the
Asia Foundation, the American Academy of Diplomacy and a
director of AFLAC, Applied Materials and Cargill. He is a member
of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and
the National Academy of Public Administration.
Dr. Armacost and his wife Roberta are the parents of three
grown sons and six grandchildren.
After graduating from Denison, Houston rode across Canada
on a bicycle, through Oregon to Colorado, where she worked in
various jobs including being a bartender and flag woman on a
highway crew. She eventually earned a master’s degree from the
University of Utah (1992) and then spent a year as an instructor
in Denison’s English department. She currently is director of the
Creative Writing Program at the University of California, Davis,
where she is a professor of English. She also teaches at summer
writers’ conferences and festivals in the United States and abroad.
Houston occasionally appears on CBS-TV Sunday Morning doing
literary essays on the wilderness. She is a licensed river guide
and a horsewoman and when school is not in session, lives in
southwestern Colorado at 9,000 feet above sea level near the
headwaters of the Rio Grande River.
In the 1993 summer issue of Denison Magazine, Houston
shared her thoughts about writing. She said, “I write for the sheer
love of language, to watch the words crash into each other on
the page, to watch the spark of electricity between them as they
sit together, the rowdy unpredictable job of language play. I write
because I know there’s nothing better than a good story, well
told, because I know that we rework, relive and re-create our
lives through our stories, that in the end our lives are nothing
more than the stories we’ve collected, the tales we remember
about each other and ourselves.”