I King Jordan | 2025 Honorary Degree Recipients

Описание: A motorcycle accident changed the trajectory of King Jordan’s life.

Raised in the small town of Glen Riddle, Pennsylvania, Jordan joined the U.S. Navy after high school graduation and served four years. After that accident, he woke up in the hospital, profoundly deaf at the age of 21.

“Becoming deaf changed my life for the better. I grew up with normal hearing and was a very average student in high school—all five years of it,” he says. “After the accident, I quickly realized that if I wanted to make anything of my life, I would need an education.”

He enrolled at Gallaudet University—the world’s only university where all programs are designed and delivered for the deaf and hard of hearing. He earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1970. The next year, he graduated with a master’s in psychology from the University of Tennessee and followed that up in 1973 with a PhD.

Jordan joined the Gallaudet faculty, eventually becoming the Department of Psychology’s chair and then the dean of the university’s College of Arts and Sciences. Along the way, he worked as a research fellow at Donaldson’s School for the Deaf in Edinburgh, Scotland; an exchange scholar at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland; and a visiting scholar and lecturer at schools in Paris, Toulouse, and Marseille, France.

In 1988, he was appointed the university’s first deaf president.

“Some were inspired by my appointment; others were doubtful,” he told a group of parents gathered at a symposium on early childhood hearing loss in Florida in 2006. “Some—including some deaf people—didn’t believe a deaf person could succeed as the president of a university and expected me to fail. Why would deaf people think that? That’s part of the power of attitudes in society and the dynamics of oppression. When people are told all of their lives, and sometimes for generations, that they cannot do certain things, or that they cannot have the same aspirations as others, some come to believe it.”

Jordan served as Gallaudet’s president until 2006, boosting the institution’s national and international profile and serving as a tireless advocate and spokesman for deaf and hard of hearing people around the world. Since leaving that post, he has continued to speak about and in support of the deaf community.

A recipient of a dozen honorary degrees, Jordan tells the Class of 2025 to be bold. “Higher education is life changing. Take risks. Don’t be timid or afraid. You have achieved something very special by graduating from the University of Utah. Act like it!”

“The optimism I have for the future is what I see in younger people,” he adds. “The world has changed so much since I was a university student and will undergo more and more change going forward. Young people are living through these changes and will be able to adapt to them and the new challenges.”

I. King Jordan served as the first deaf president of Gallaudet University from 1988 to 2006. Jordan’s leadership heightened public awareness of the importance of Gallaudet’s educational contributions to the nation and the world. Over his tenure, he served as an international spokesperson and advocate for deaf and hearing impaired people. Jordan continues to speak at events across the country.