The Conferring of Honorary Degrees
Walter E. Beach '56

Citation Presented by Andrew C. Rudalevige, Associate Professor of Political Science
Conferring of the degree by William G. Durden, President

Today we honor Walter E. Beach of Dickinson's class of 1956: exemplary alumnus, political scientist, and public servant. He contributed to campus and civil society in ways matched by few others – as role model, tireless benefactor, and sage counsel. Walter's much-mourned passing in November 2006 deprives the Dickinson community of the opportunity to present this degree to him in person. But it will not deprive us of the opportunity to pay deserved tribute to his lifetime of service.

Many organizations in Washington , from the International Eye Foundation to the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area, were strengthened by Walter's leadership. Most centrally, perhaps, the American Political Science Association, and multiple related regional associations owe much to his generous and tireless efforts to build the discipline professionally and institutionally. In fifteen years at APSA Walter directed the venerable Congressional Fellowship Program; served as editor of the journal PS: Political Science and Politics ; and was awarded the association's Frank Goodnow Award for Distinguished Service. In a memorial note the APSA aptly described Walter as “an enthusiastic citizen of political science and of public life,” and could have added that Walter did much to bridge the sometimes puzzling divide between those two concerns—through his role, for instance, in founding The Washington Center, his decade at the Brookings Institution, or his work at the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation.

Walter took his priorities seriously, and we can only be grateful that Dickinson College was one of his priorities. He exhorted his fellow alumni to say “Dickinson” three times every day, tirelessly activating his personal and professional network to connect prominent persons to the College; to reconnect Dickinsonians to their alma mater—and the College to its own history—and to recruit many young men and women to write their own page of that history. He said in one e-mail message, that “Bill Durden makes me work too hard”—but he said it with a virtual smile, for hard work on behalf of this College was part of his very being. As President Durden would later eulogize, Walter was “the living definition of a loyal Dickinsonian.”

Consider: Walter was a member of Kappa Sigma and Skull and Key; the Dickinson Bicentennial Committee; Trout Gallery Advisory Board, and Friends of the Library; the Washington chapter of the Alumni Club; and, for seventeen years until 2005, the Board of Trustees, including a key stint as chair of its committee on the trustees. In 1992, Walter was recognized with that year's Distinguished Alumni Award. In 1999, he and his brother Allen established the Liselotte von Usedom Beach Scholarship Endowment in memory of their mother, to support a sophomore student majoring in German. And it is because of Walter and Allen, as well as trustee Sherwood Goldberg, that we meet this day under the bronzed, as well as figurative, gaze of founder Benjamin Rush.

Thus, Mr. President, in honor of his outstanding service to the College, his array of professional accomplishments—and his invariable enthusiasm, generosity, civility, and simple kindness—it is with great pleasure that we recall today the honorary degree of Doctor of Public Service recently granted to Walter Eggert Beach, class of 1956.

***********

Upon the recommendation of the faculty to the Board of Trustees, and by its mandamus, the degree of Doctor of Public Service, honoris causa, with all the rights privileges and distinction thereunto appertaining, the diploma and the hood were awarded posthumously to Walter Eggert Beach at his memorial service in Washington , DC on November 25, 2006. The degree was accepted by his brothers, Allen Beach, Dickinson class of 1955, and Arthur Beach.

Back to Commencement 2007