Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, Wade Nobles to Receive Honorary Degrees at 2025 Commencement

CSUDH will confer honorary degrees to two distinguished recipients during the 2025 Commencement ceremonies on May 16 and 17.

Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, a pioneering public servant and lawyer, will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree at the 6:00 p.m. ceremony on May 16. A Los Angeles native, she was the second Black woman ever to be admitted to USC Law School in 1953. As a lawyer, she fought for civil rights in housing and probate law before entering public office as the first Black woman elected to the California State Assembly in 1966. She continued her trailblazing as the first Black woman from the West Coast elected to Congress in 1972, and the first woman of color to serve as Vice-Chairperson at the Democratic National Convention.

Burke served on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (1979, then 1992–2008), and was appointed to the Amtrak Board by President Barack Obama in 2013. After retiring from the Board of Supervisors, she continued her legal work as a mediator, focusing on state and local regulatory issues, commercial disputes, medical malpractice, labor and employment, land use and environmental law.

For more than four decades, Dr. Wade W. Nobles has studied classical African philosophy and traditional African wisdom traditions as the grounding for the development of an authentic Black psychology. He is a founding member of the Association of Black Psychologists and former national President (1994-95). He is Professor Emeritus of Africana Studies and Black Psychology at San Francisco State University and the Co-founder and past Executive Director of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Black Family Life and Culture, Inc., where he spent over 40 years researching, documenting, publishing, designing and implementing African-centered service and training programs.

Dr. Nobles currently serves as the chairperson of the ABPsi Pan African Black Psychology Global Initiative, the lead architect for the implementation of the African American Wellness Hub Complex, and the project director for the Interim Virtual Wellness Hub Project for the Behavioral Health Care Services in Alameda County, Calif. He is the keynote speaker for the May 17 ceremony at 6:00 p.m. and will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree.

CSUDH has awarded honorary doctorate degrees to 22 exemplary individuals since the first was awarded to Walter J. Turnbull in 1991. These individuals have demonstrated excellence in areas that benefit humanity, the CSUDH campus, the state, nation, or world.