Photojournalist Flip Schulke ’54, who has worked for publications such as LIFE, National Geographic and Ebony, received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree on Feb. 12.

Schulke’s work, which is currently featured in an exhibition in the art gallery of the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center, has focused on the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali and underwater photography.

At Thursday’s presentation in the John B. Davis Lecture Hall, Communication Studies Visiting Assistant Professor Michael Griffin presented the honorary degree to Schulke.

After receiving the degree, Schulke spoke to an audience made up of alumni, students, faculty, staff and his family and showed a collection of his photographs. In his lecture, he appealed to Macalester students to press the college to keep the Communications and Media Studies Department. He asked that Macalester also keep Griffin at Macalester in order to have someone who can handle the 9,000 digitized photographs that he has donated to Macalester.

“What I gathered is [that] Macalester is sitting on its duff not using these pictures,” attendee Art Streich ’52 said. “It’s time Macalester woke up to what they’ve got in their collection.”

The photographs and the stories that went along with them impressed many in the audience.

“I like the story of the woman with the assassinated husband, Myrlie Evers, the picture with the tear,” said Sonja Taylor, a senior in high school from Chaska, Minn., “It’s a huge insight into human nature. Just seeing that image was moving.”

At the opening of the exhibition “Flip Schulke: A Life in Photojournalism,” fans and friends greeted Schulke as he signed copies of his photojournalism books.

“[Schulke is] like Forrest Gump—in every part of history,” said Dick Nicholson, a friend of Schulke’s family and a St. Paul resident.

“He [marches] to the beat of his own drummer—always [tells] the truth whether it [is] convenient or not,” said Schulke’s sister Roxy Kaufmann. “He [is] a warm person. He [is] a rebel. There’s no doubt about it.”

“When I went here we had 1,200 students, four buildings and I got a hell of an education…What I learned was how to learn,” Schulke said in a talk to the Advanced Print Journalism class prior to the honorary degree ceremony.

Schulke said that at his orientation at Macalester he was told, “If you came to this college to make a lot of money, you came to the wrong place. You came to this college to make the world a better place.”

He also discussed current events in his talk to the class. He called the Iraq conflict an “idiotic war,” and spoke about the ideology he felt Macalester had instilled in him.

“I was infected with liberal thought, and I haven’t changed my mind,” Schulke said. “I have seen dead bodies, which our president hasn’t, neither has Cheney…I have more idealism today than I had when I was here.”

Afterward, Schulke showed the class some of his photographs, some of which were not shown at his later lecture. One particular series of kindergarten children playing on nude sculptures in Oslo, Norway has never been published in the United States.

According to Schulke, he has only been invited to speak once before at Macalester, and has never been asked to teach here.

“People in the administration here do not believe that photojournalism is an academic subject or profession,” Schulke said.

According to President Brian Rosenberg, typically two to five honorary degrees are given per year.