UNCA will award 3 honorary doctorates at 2024 commencement: Who are the recipients?
ASHEVILLE – UNC Asheville has announced the names of the three people to receive honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees during the 2024 commencement event on May 11.
UNCA has presented honorary degrees since 1986. In a recent news release, it stated that honorary degrees are awarded to prominent education, civic and arts leaders. Chancellor Kimberly van Noort gave her perspective on the meaning of these honorary degrees in the same release.
“The accomplishments achieved by these remarkable members of the broader Asheville community represent resilience, dedication, and purpose – pillars worth celebrating as our graduates forge ahead,” van Noort said.
Who are the honorary graduates?
Oscar Wong
Oscar Wong is the founder of Highland Brewing Company and a former UNCA trustee.
After moving to the Asheville area in 1992 with plans to retire, Wong’s path to becoming the founder of one of the most successful breweries in Asheville began when he picked up brewing as a hobby.
In 1994, he launched Highland Brewing Co., Asheville's first craft brewery since prohibition. Decades later, Asheville earned the nickname “Beer City, USA,” and Wong was affectionately dubbed the “Godfather of Asheville craft beer” by enthusiasts.
After his second retirement, Wong kept Highland Brewing in the family. It is now run by his daughter, Leah Wong Ashburn, who serves as president.
In addition to establishing the now-iconic brewery, Wong has spent years serving the Asheville-area community as the president of the Asheville Rotary Club and board chair for Arc of Buncombe County, which serves children and adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities. He also served two terms on the UNCA Board of Trustees.
The honorary degree UNCA will award Wong is far from the first recognition he has received for his accomplishments in the community. A few items from the long list of awards Wong has earned include the Brewers Association’s Recognition Award in 2020 and in 2023, and the highest civilian honor in N.C., the Order of the Long Leaf Pine.
David Holt
David Holt is a four-time Grammy Award-winning artist who toured for many years with Doc Watson.
After earning undergraduate degrees in art and biology at UC Santa Barbara, Holt moved to Western North Carolina. In 1995, he founded and directed a program in Appalachian music at Warren Wilson College. To this day, WWC offers a bachelor’s degree in traditional music led by an award-winning staff.
Much of Holt’s extensive collection of folk music is now part of the permanent collection at the Library of Congress. Holt also hosted several television shows, including successful N.C. Public Television programs “Folkways,” first aired in 2008, and Emmy-nominated “David Holt’s State of Music” in 2019.
David Holt’s long collaboration with famous folk musician Doc Watson yielded two of Holt’s four Grammy awards. Holt’s individual Grammy wins were for Best Traditonal Folk Album and Best Spoken Word Album for Children. He also received seven individual Grammy nominations over the course of his musical career.
Walter Ziffer
Walter Ziffer is a concentration camp survivor and the author of several books including “Confronting the Silence: A Holocaust Survivor’s Search for God.”
Ziffer spent several years in concentration camps as a teenager after being taken with other children from his native Czechoslovakia by the Nazis at age 14. He was one of only two survivors out of the group of more than 30 victims.
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After migrating to the U.S. at age 22, Ziffer converted to Christianity, eventually earning a doctorate in theology at the University of Strasbourg and spending several decades teaching at a number of European universities.
Ziffer had converted back to Judaism by the time Asheville became his home in 1993. He offered classes and lectures at UNCA and in 2021, Ziffer’s work was honored through the creation of the Walter Ziffer & Gail Rosenthal Lecture Studies by the UNCA Center for Jewish Studies.
UNCA’s recent news release included a quote from a review of “Confronting the Silence: A Holocaust Survivor’s Search for God” by Richard Chess, professor emeritus of English and former director of the Center for Jewish Studies at UNC Asheville:
“You will learn of Walter’s complex life journey, and you may experience, thanks to his skillfully told story and clearly articulated questions and insights ... the presence of a great man who finds in his own story lessons important for the rest of us, especially now.”
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Iris Seaton is a trending news reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at iseaton@citizentimes.com.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Who are this year's UNC Asheville honorary degree recipients?
