Jon Bon Jovi, Rush Holt, Connie Mercer Myers of HomeFront among the six New Jersey residents awarded honorary degrees at Princeton University’s Commencement ceremony

Princeton University awarded six honorary degrees — all to residents of New Jersey — during the school’s annual Commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 16. The socially distanced ceremony was held outdoors at the Princeton Stadium.

Musician and philanthropist Jon Bon Jovi, educator and 1804 Consultants CEO Linda Caldwell Epps, Princeton University Professor of English and Comparative Literature Emeritus John Fleming, physicist and eight-term member of Congress Rush Holt, public health advocate and longtime president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Dr. Risa Juanita Lavizzo-Mourey, and HomeFront CEO and Founder Connie Mercer Myers were recognized for their contributions to society in areas including music, history, education, literature, public service, public health, social justice and ending homelessness.

Bon Jovi, who accepted the honor in absentia, established the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation in 2006 in an effort to break the cycle of hunger, poverty and homelessness in New Jersey. JBJ Soul Kitchen community restaurants, created by the foundation, are designed to ensure that everyone has access to a hot, nutritious meal. Locations include Red Bank, Toms River and the Rutgers-Newark campus. JBJ Soul Kitchens have served more than 135,000 meals so far. Bon Jovi was a member of President Obama’s White House Council for Community Solutions, assisting in recovery efforts after Superstorm Sandy and building affordable housing in 11 states. During the coronavirus pandemic, the JBJ Soul Kitchen Food Bank provided carryout meals to first responders, hospital workers, soup kitchens and other nonprofits.

Caldwell Epps has devoted her professional life to the advancement of cultural and educational institutions in the state. A native of Elizabeth and resident of Newark, she has served as an administrator, educator and consultant to organizations, including the New Jersey Historical Society, where she was president and CEO, and New Jersey Network Television and Radio, where she was vice president for institutional relations. Epps serves as co-chair of the Revolution NJ Advisory Council as the United States prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its founding. She has also served as a consultant to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, the William Trent House, the Newark Public Library, the Scotch Plains Public Library, the Timbuctoo historical site, the Old First Church of Elizabeth, and the Center for Holocaust, Human Rights and Genocide Education. She was the 2019 recipient of the Beulah Oliphant award, presented annually to women in recognition of outstanding contributions to New Jersey history, in historic preservation, education or scholarship. 

Fleming is one of Princeton University’s legendary lecturers and the recipient of the President’s Distinguished Teaching Award, among many other honors. An expert in the literature of the Middle Ages, his career spanned more than four decades. Raised on a farm in Mountain Home, Arkansas, he was a Rhodes Scholar and later became the Louis W. Fairchild Professor of English Literature. He chaired the English department at the university for years, served twice as the head of First College (then Wilson College), and for nearly two decades was chief marshal at Princeton’s Commencement ceremonies. Fleming has published extensively in the fields of medieval English and European literature, medieval art history, and the history of Christian thought and spirituality. He is a past president of the Medieval Academy of America.

Holt, a physicist, was on the Swarthmore College faculty for eight years and headed the Nuclear and Scientific Division of the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Strategic Forces from 1987 to 1989. He then served as assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory until 1989, winning election to Congress a year later from New Jersey’s 12th District. He served eight terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he was an unwaveringly strong advocate for science, research and higher education. After leaving Congress, he became chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the Science group of journals. He retired in 2019.

Lavizzo-Mourey is the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Population Health and Health Equity Professor Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania. From 2003 to 2017, she was the president and chief executive officer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the largest U.S. philanthropy organization dedicated to health. During her tenure at the foundation, she spearheaded initiatives such as creating healthier, more equitable communities. A specialist in geriatrics, she came to the foundation from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was the Sylvan Eisman Professor of Medicine and Health Care Systems, director of the Institute on Aging, and chief of geriatric medicine at the School of Medicine. She worked as deputy administrator for the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research under President George H.W. Bush and served as quality of care chair for President Bill Clinton’s panels on health care. President Barack Obama appointed her to the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition, and she was named a White House Champion of Change. 

Mercer Meyers founded HomeFront three decades ago in an effort to break the cycle of poverty. The organization started as a group of volunteers delivering food and water to homeless families living in motels along the Route 1 corridor. Since then, HomeFront has grown into one of the leading nonprofit social services agencies in the Princeton region. The organization offers housing assistance, education, life skills, employment training, childcare and more for people who are homeless or at risk of becoming so. The Family Campus in Ewing provides temporary shelter, transitional and permanent housing to more than 450 people a night, two-thirds of them children.

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