Grad schools to hear from variety of graduation speakers

A Nazi hunter, a former U.S. Senate advisor and a health care executive will speak at the graduation ceremonies of two of the University's professional schools. The Law School will hear from Commencement speaker Robert Bennett, a prominent Washington attorney, and from Honorary Fellow Eli Rosenbaum, whom the Philadelphia Inquirer calls "one of the world's most tenacious pursuers of Nazi war criminals." The School of Veterinary Medicine will hear from John Shadduck, an executive at the Heska Corporation. Bennett, who was voted speaker by the Law School's graduating class, has served on the Senate's Select Committee on Ethics in several major investigations. He also consulted for the foreign relations committee during the confirmation of Alexander Haig as secretary of state. Washingtonian magazine considers him Washington's "Best Lawyer," and The National Law Journal placed him on its "1994 Power List" of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States. He is a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Chosen to speak by a faculty and student committee, Rosenbaum is director of the Justice Department's Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations. Rosenbaum began his obsession early. Just a few months out of Harvard Law School, he discovered that Arthur Rudolf, a retired NASA engineer who had designed the Saturn V rocket, had recommended and directed the use of slave labor to build rockets for Adolf Hitler. When the OSI confronted Rudolf, he agreed to renounce his citizenship and moved to West Germany. In his book Betrayal, Rosenbaum details his investigation into the criminal past of Kurt Waldheim, a former United Nations secretary general and president of Austria who had denied any wrongdoing. "I think every country and every people has its legions of would-be Waldheims and other war criminals who under certain circumstances would do the same thing as the Nazis," Rosenbaum told the Inquirer in 1993. "I remember questioning one man who was a killer and I left thinking that, if I didn't know what I knew about him, I would have no trouble hiring him to look after my children," he said. John Shadduck, former dean of the Texas A&M; College of Veterinary Medicine, is a specialist in infectious diseases in animals. Law School commencement will be held at 11 a.m. May 18 at the Academy of Music. Veterinary School graduation will be at the Annenberg Center's Zellerbach Theater May 19 at 2:30 p.m. The College of General Studies graduation will be held on the Class of 1952 Plaza -- between the Castle and the Wistar Institute -- May 18 at 12 p.m. Retiring CGS employee Katherine Weiss Pollak will receive the Distinguished Service Award.