Berklee Awards Honorary Doctorate to Bob Dylan

Dear Berklee community,

I’m excited to share the news that Berklee has awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree to songwriter, performer, and cultural icon Bob Dylan, recognizing a lifetime of songwriting that changed the sound and scope of modern music. The news was announced as an exclusive in Rolling Stone. 

This is an incredible moment for Berklee. We are thrilled to celebrate Dylan’s extraordinary influence on modern music as well as his lifelong commitment to creative exploration. Dylan’s music has shaped how the world hears itself. He’s an artist who has never stopped evolving, who keeps chasing truth through sound and language. That’s the spirit we try to cultivate here every day. Honoring him feels like a reaffirmation of the creative impulse that built this place. 

I’d like to share Dylan’s words upon accepting the award: “Thank you, Berklee College of Music, for bestowing on me this prestigious honor. What a pleasant surprise,” he said. “Who knows what path my career might have taken if I’d been fortunate enough to learn from some of the great musicians who taught at Berklee. It’s something to think about.” 

The honorary doctorate coincides with Berklee’s Signature Series concert on November 5, Watching the River Flow: A Roots Salute to Bob Dylan, celebrating Dylan’s legacy and immeasurable impact. Coproduced by Matt Glaser, artistic director of Berklee’s American Roots Music Program, and Farayi Malek, assistant professor in the Ensemble Department, the concert will feature performances by students, faculty, alumni, and visiting artists. 

For over six decades, Dylan has drawn from folk, blues, gospel, country, and rock, creating a body of work that captures both the American story and the inner life of the people living it. Through his writing, he shows that a song can tell the truth with the economy of a poem and the reach of a novel, influencing generations of artists who still look to his work as a map for what’s possible. 

Emerging from the 1960s folk scene, Dylan expanded the possibilities of popular songwriting, joining the everyday and the poetic, the intimate and the political. Over the course of more than 40 studio albums—including early landmarks such as The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, the confessional Blood on the Tracks, and the layered and atmospheric Time Out of Mind—he has continually explored new sounds and ideas while defying categorization. He has sold more than 100 million records, and inspired over 30 films and 2,000 books, reaching audiences on a scale few artists have matched.

His work has been recognized with nearly every major artistic honor. He has earned 10 Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe, and has been celebrated with the Kennedy Center Honors, the National Medal of Arts, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A member of the Rock & Roll, Nashville Songwriters, and Songwriters halls of fame, Dylan also received a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation in 2008 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”

Dylan joins a distinguished roster of Berklee honorary doctorate recipients that includes Duke Ellington (the first, in 1971), Aretha Franklin, Quincy Jones ’51, Joni Mitchell, B.B. King, Ringo Starr, Tito Puente, Roberta Flack, Juan Luis Guerra ’82, A. R. Rahman, and Loretta Lynn, among others. 

We are honored to have the opportunity to recognize Dylan’s accomplishments. 

Yours,

Jim Lucchese
President