At its 101st commencement ceremony in Alice Tully Hall, the Juilliard School awarded honorary degrees last week to composer Milton Babbitt; choreographer Pina Bausch; director of Juilliard’s drama division, Michael Kahn; musician and conductor Robert Mann; jazz musician and composer Wynton Marsalis; educator and philanthropic advisor Elizabeth McCormack, and philanthropist and arts leader Martin E. Segal.

In his comments, Juilliard president Joseph Polisi cited Mr. Segal’s wit in making speeches and commended his classic line: “When listening to a speech, the two most beautiful words uttered by the speaker are ‘in closing.'”

Later, Mr. Marsalis, the commencement speaker, approached the podium and began, “Thank you very much. In closing…” The audience roared.

Mr. Marsalis offered some advice to the graduates, including “When you get a bad review, never ask somebody if they’ve seen it.” About balancing the sometimes competing demands of art and commercialism, he offered this yardstick: “Integrity is real, and so is starvation.”

He recalled the time at age 19 he broached the subject of how little money he was earning, while on tour with Herbie Hancock. The noted jazz composer and pianist said to the young Mr. Marsalis: “If you walk out, how many in the audience will leave? Now, if I walk out, how many will?”

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NAVASKY NOTES

The CUNY Graduate Center held its 42nd doctoral commencement exercises last week. Author and journalist Victor Navasky gave the address and recalled a scene from his favorite Marx Brothers movie. Groucho emerges from upon the football field shouting, “Is there a doctor in the house? Is there a doctor in the house?”

“Way up in the grandstands,” Mr. Navasky recalled, “a man leans out of his seat carrying his medical bag, fights his way through the crowd. At last out of breath, he arrives on the field saying, ‘I’m a doctor, I’m a doctor.’

“Groucho flicks an ash off his cigar, wiggles his eyebrows and asks, ‘How do you like the game, doc?'”

Referring to the 331 doctors in the house at the Manhattan Center on West 34th Street, Mr. Navasky added, “I say it is not enough to be a spectator at the game. Lead into the fray, and give it all you’ve got.”

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GOLF GAME

The Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law hosted a conference on presidential powers.

Amid discussion of the White House, Sidney Blumenthal recalled, “In the Oval Office, you can actually see the cleat marks of President Eisenhower’s golf shoes. Yet, each president must walk with a different step.”

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HIGH BAR

At the Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center, Stacy Schiff introduced Philip Roth, who received the PEN/NabokovAward honoring a body of work that exemplifies “enduring originality and consummate craftsmanship.”

Ms. Schiff said it was a difficult award to judge in that one has to be careful to avoid what Vladimir Nabokov termed the “second-raters.” Who might they be, according to Nabokov? Ms Schiff elaborated to audience laughter: “A group exemplified by, but by no means limited to, Voltaire, Balzac, Zola, Stendhal, Camus, Mann, Lawrence, Conrad, Dreiser, Gorky, James, Eliot (either one), Pound, Maugham, Faulkner, Hemingway (with the exception of one story), Dostoyevsky, Forster, Joyce (half of him anyway),Woolf (either one), or Bellow.”

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GIN, TONICS, AND ARCHITECTONICS

A crowd gathered at Baruch College’s Newman Institute for Real Estate Studies for the 2006 Temko Critics Panel, sponsored by the Forum for Urban Design and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Guests enjoyed drinks before settling down for the program. Apropos of this, a host noted the time someone approached Benjamin Franklin, saying, “Mr. Franklin, at the punch bowl again? Must you drink to be witty?” To which Franklin riposted, “No, sir. I drink to make my companions witty.”

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LITERARY NOTES

The editor of the Hudson Review, Paula Deitz, received an honorary degree from Smith College.

In other Hudson Review news: The Princeton University Library’s Department of Rare Books and Special Collections will house the archives of the Hudson Review, founded in 1948.The magazine was founded by three Princeton graduates Frederick Morgan, Joseph Bennett, and William Arrowsmith.

gshapiro@nysun.com