Invoking the words and dreams of her late husband, Victoria Reggie Kennedy laid out for University of Massachusetts Boston graduates yesterday a vision for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the US Senate as a place where students from grade school to graduate school can become part of the nation’s ongoing political history.
The institute, to be built on the UMass campus, “will not be, as some have cynically suggested, a static library or a shrine, either to my husband or even to the US Senate,’’ Kennedy said in her keynote address to thousands of UMass graduates, addressing critics’ complaints that the center would be more of a tribute than a learning tool.
Instead, she said, the center will be interactive, allowing visitors and students to reenact debates, learn the histories of each individual Senate desk and its past occupant, and study the legislative process.
“It will be a dynamic center of learning and engagement that takes advantage of 21st-century technology to provide each visitor with a unique and information-rich, personalized experience that literally will bring history alive,’’ Kennedy said in the commencement address on a warm, sunny morning.
The senator’s widow also received an honorary doctor of laws degree, an award UMass chancellor J. Keith Motley said was earned for her “strong advocacy for women, children, and families,’’ as well as her work against gun violence.
Another Bay Stater, US Representative Edward J. Markey, was given the Chancellor’s Medal for Exemplary Leadership for his three decades of work on energy and the environment. Markey, a Democrat and the dean of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, chairs the Select Committee on Global Warming and Energy Independent, coauthored the House climate change bill,
Victoria Reggie Kennedy received an honorary doctor of laws degree yesterday from the UMass chancellor, J. Keith Motley. (Wendy Maeda/Globe Staff)
