International Development Leader to Give Founders' Day Address

Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, founder and chairman of the world’s largest development organization, will deliver the Founders’ Day address and receive an honorary doctor of civil law during the Oct. 17 Founders’ Day Convocation at the University of the South. The Founders’ Day ceremony, at noon in All Saints’ Chapel, will include the conferral of two additional honorary degrees and the induction of new members into the Order of Gownsmen.

The University will confer upon the Rt. Rev. Rayford High, provisional bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, an honorary doctor of divinity; U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Wright will receive an honorary doctor of letters.

Undergraduate students will join the Order of Gownsmen, Sewanee’s academic honor society body responsible for maintaining the spirit, traditions and ideals of the University. Because the Convocation falls at the beginning of Family Weekend, many parents will be on campus to see the “gowning.”

Leading up to the Convocation, Abed will give a public talk Oct. 15, and Wright will read from his work Oct.16. [See related story on page 6.]

Sir Abed is the founder and chairperson of BRAC. Formerly the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, BRAC supports lasting change by giving the poor the tools to lift themselves out of poverty. Under Sir Abed’s leadership, BRAC grew in the span of four decades to become the largest development organization in the world. Educated at both Dhaka and Glasgow universities, Sir Abed was a senior executive when the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War changed his life. He left his job and devoted himself to Bangladesh’s war of independence. After the war, Sir Abed returned to the newly independent Bangladesh, and established BRAC to serve refugees returning to Bangladesh. BRAC now operates in 12 countries, reaching more than 135 million people through its development interventions, which range from primary education, essential healthcare, agricultural support, human rights and legal services to microfinance and enterprise development. 

Sir Abed has been honored with numerous national and international awards for his achievements. He was appointed Knight Commander of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George by the British Crown. In 2014, he was included in Fortune’s list of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.

The Rt. Rev. Rayford High Jr., a member of Sewanee’s class of 1963, has served as the provisional bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth since November 2012. Prior to serving as provisional bishop, he was the retired bishop suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, where he served for eight years. He was formerly canon for pastoral ministries and the diocesan liaison to St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System. As suffragan bishop, he oversaw 44 congregations in the Northeast, Northwest and Southeast Convocations and managed the pastoral care of clergy and their families as well as renewal and prison ministries. He served in parishes for 32 years during his early ministry. He received a B.A. from the University of the South and obtained his M.Div. from Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass. He was elected to represent the diocese as a deputy at General Convention on eight occasions and was named Humanitarian of the Year in 1997 by the Waco Conference of Christians and Jews.

Charles Wright was recently named by the Library of Congress Poet Laureate of the United States. Wright was born in Pickwick Dam, Tenn., and educated at Davidson College. He began to read and write poetry while stationed in Italy during four years of military service. A degree at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop followed, along with a Fulbright fellowship in Italy. His third collection of poems, “Country Music: Selected Early Poems,” received a National Book Award. Wright’s influences range from the work of Ezra Pound and Italian modernist Eugenio Montale to that of ancient Chinese poets, along with his education at Episcopal boarding schools. In 2011, he told PBS that the content of all of his poems, no matter their precise subject, is “language, landscape and the idea of God.” He is the author of more than 20 books of poetry and two volumes of criticism. His poetry has won the Pulitzer Prize, the Griffin International Poetry Prize (Scar Tissue), the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Black Zodiac) and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets (Chickamauga). Wright had a distinguished career at the University of Virginia as the Souder Family Professor of English. His many honors include the 2013 Bollingen Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit Medal and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.