JUST before Memorial Day, Ashley Judd graduated from Harvard. In a universitywide commencement ceremony, she shared billing with Rose Kennedy Schlossberg, daughter of Caroline, who was getting her bachelor’s degree, and Meryl Streep, who was awarded an honorary degree. Ms. Judd’s father and “a mess of girlfriends” were in Cambridge, Mass., for the ceremony. Her husband, Dario Franchitti, could not attend because of the Indianapolis 500, which he would win that weekend for the second time. He watched live via Harvard’s Internet feed, and they texted.
Ms. Judd, who plays tough-yet-vulnerable women on Broadway and in film (“Double Jeopardy,” “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood”), has spent the last year in the midcareer master’s program in public administration at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Hollywood has always had its share of activists — from Ronald Reagan and Warren Beatty to Madonna and Angelina Jolie. But Ms. Judd is one of the few to get formal training in public service.
She hardly lacks for causes. She has delivered impassioned speeches to the United Nations General Assembly about sex- and labor-trafficking, and to the National Press Club about mountaintop-removal mining in Kentucky, her home state. She is a board member of PSI, a global health organization where she has worked on issues like maternal health, family planning and malaria prevention. . .
