On May 12, 2005, Donald Kagan delivered the 34th Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at the D.C. Convention Center.

The Jefferson Lecture was established in 1972 as the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual and public achievement in the humanities.

Past Jefferson Lecturers include Helen Vendler, David McCullough, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Arthur Miller, James McPherson, Caroline Walker Bynum, Bernard Bailyn, Stephen Toulmin, Toni Morrison, Vincent Scully, Gwendolyn Brooks, Bernard Knox, Walker Percy, Cleanth Brooks, Sydney Hook, Barbara Tuchman, Saul Bellow, John Hope Franklin, Robert Penn Warren, Erik Erikson, and Lionel Trilling.

The online version of Humanities magazine features interviews with and profiles of the following Jefferson Lecturers: Caroline Walker Bynum, Bernard Bailyn, and Stephen Toulmin. The text of the lectures given by Caroline Walker Bynum, and Bernard Bailyn, and web features about James McPherson, Arthur Miller, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., David McCullough, and Helen Vendler are also available.