Dr. Lee Eliot Berk, the namesake and second president of Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, was a champion of music who dedicated his entire career to music education and building Berklee into an internationally-renowned institution that today is the desired destination for countless music students from across the globe.
Brown University, his alma mater, honored him with the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters in 2014, recognizing him as “an educator, civic leader, author and advocate for the power of music, who has forever changed the landscape of education through the development of contemporary curricula at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where you served as president for 25 years.”
The honorary degree citation read: “Succeeding your father, who founded the college in 1945, you have cultivated a rich array of pathways to excellence in the performance, production and application of music. Under your leadership, Berklee kept pace with evolving technology, concentrated on practical career training for musicians, established the premier distance-learning program for music education, and forged enduring connections with international partners and local organizations that were willing to embrace the therapeutic benefits of music.
“Your belief in the value of music and the cross-cultural understanding that can result from musical pursuits has motivated yo
