President Bush to Award the 2005 National Humanities Medals
President George W. Bush will award the 2005 National Humanities Medal on Thursday to eleven distinguished Americans and one scholarly research project for their contributions to the humanities. At a White House ceremony, the President will present the National Humanities Medal to Walter Berns, Matthew Bogdanos, Eva Brann, John Lewis Gaddis, Richard Gilder, Mary Ann Glendon, Leigh Keno, Leslie Keno, Alan Charles Kors, Lewis Lehrman, Judith Martin, and the Papers of George Washington Project at the University of Virginia.
The National Humanities Medal, first awarded in 1989 as the Charles Frankel Prize, honors individuals and organizations whose work has deepened the nation's understanding of the humanities, broadened citizens' engagement with the humanities, or helped preserve and expand America's access to important humanities resources.
The following individuals and organization will receive the National Humanities Medal for 2005:
Walter Berns (Washington, D.C.), a political scientist, is a leading authority on the history of the U.S. Constitution. He is the John M. Olin University Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Berns also taught at Louisiana State University, Yale University, Cornell University, Colgate University, and University of Toronto. He earned his master's and doctorate degrees in political science at the University of Chicago and has published many works on American government and society. Among them are: Making Patriots (2001), Taking the Constitution Seriously (1987), In Defense of Liberal Democracy (1984), The First Amendment and the Future of American Democracy (1976), and Freedom, Virtue, and the First Amendment (1957). His articles have also appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Commentary, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Berns served on the National Council on the Humanities from 1982 to 1988 and the Council of Scholars in the Library of Congress from 1981 to 1985. He was also a delegate to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
Matthew Bogdanos (New York, N.Y.), a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, has been an assistant district attorney in Manhattan since 1988. Raised waiting tables in his family's Greek restaurant, Bogdanos is a former middleweight boxer who holds a law degree and a master's in classics from Columbia University, as well as a master's in strategic studies from the Army War College. Recalled to active duty after September 11, 2001, an attack that also forced his evacuation from his Manhattan apartment a block from the Twin Towers, Bogdanos received a Bronze Star for counter-terrorist operations in Afghanistan and served several tours in Iraq. While in Iraq, Bogdanos led the investigation into the theft and destruction at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. Under his supervision, more than 5,000 artifacts have been recovered in six countries, and this became the topic of his book, Thieves of Baghdad: One Marine's Passion for Ancient Civilizations and the Journey to Recover the World's Greatest Stolen Treasures (Bloomsbury), published in October 2005. Bogdanos is donating the book's royalties to the Iraq Museum for additional recoveries and has returned to the D.A.'s office, where he continues to perform recovery work for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Eva Brann (Annapolis, Md.) has been a tutor (professor) at St. John's College in Annapolis, Md., which is known for its distinctive "great books" curriculum, since 1957, serving as dean from 1990-97. A Jewish immigrant from Berlin, Brann went to Brooklyn College and later earned her master's in classics and a doctoral degree in archaeology at Yale University. At St. John's College, she became a tutor, exploring philosophy in greater depth; the primary focus of her career has been her teaching and service to her college. Brann's latest book is Open Secrets / Inward Prospects: Reflections on World and Soul (2004). She has produced many publications, including Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and the Iliad (2002), The Music of The Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings (2004), The World of the Imagination (1992), What Then, Is Time? (1999), and The Ways of Naysaying: No, Not, Nothing, and Nonbeing (2001). Brann's long history of academic posts and honors includes fellowships with NEH and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a seat on the Maryland Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1988-1996).
John Lewis Gaddis (New Haven, Conn.), is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History and Political Science at Yale University. Educated at the University of Texas in Austin, Gaddis has also taught at Ohio University, the United States Naval War College, the University of Helsinki, Princeton University, and Oxford University. His books include The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (1972, second edition 2000); Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States: An Interpretive History (1978, second edition 1990); Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (1982, revised and expanded edition 2005); The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (1987); The United States and the End of the Cold War: Reconsiderations, Implications, Provocations (1992); We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (1997); The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (2002); and Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (2004). His latest book, The Cold War: A New History , will appear from Penguin Press at the end of this year. Gaddis teaches Cold War history, grand strategy, international studies, and biography at Yale, where he was the 2003 recipient of the Phi Beta Kappa William Clyde DeVane Award for undergraduate teaching. He is on the advisory board of the Cold War International History Project and is currently working on a biography of George F. Kennan.
Richard Gilder (New York, N.Y.) is co-founder and co-chairman of the Gilder Lehrman Collection and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History to promote the love and study of American History, now with teaching programs in fifty states, and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale. Gilder and Lewis Lehrman are founders and sponsors of the Lincoln Prize, the Frederick Douglass Book Award, and co-sponsors of the George Washington Book Prize. In 1971, he pioneered the renovation of Central Park and in 1978 became a founding and continuing trustee of the Central Park Conservancy. He also participated in the transformation of the Hayden Planetarium and of its parent, the American Museum of Natural History, into the world-class institutions they have become. In 2003 he joined the Board of the New-York Historical Society, where he serves as co-chairman, and he is a trustee of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and the American Museum of Natural History. Gilder heads the brokerage firm Gilder, Gagnon, Howe & Co.
Mary Ann Glendon (Cambridge, Mass.), is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University. She writes and teaches in the fields of human rights, comparative law, constitutional law, and legal theory. Her most recent book, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (2001), was described by the New York Times reviewer as the definitive study of the framing of the UDHR. Glendon served as a member of the U.S. President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005. She is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Academy of Comparative Law, and a past president of the UNESCO-sponsored International Association of Legal Science. By appointment of Pope John Paul II, she is president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and a member of the Pontifical Council for the Laity. In 1995 she headed the 22-member delegation of the Holy See to the Fourth U.N. Women's conference in Beijing. Glendon has contributed to legal and social thought in several articles and books and has lectured widely in this country and in Europe. Her books, bringing a comparative approach to a variety of subjects, include A Nation Under Lawyers (1996), Seedbeds of Virtue (co-edited with David Blankenhorn, 1995), Rights Talk (1991), The Transformation of Family Law (1989), Abortion and Divorce in Western Law (1987), The New Family and the New Property (1981), and textbooks on comparative legal traditions.
Leigh Keno (New York, N.Y.) is president of Leigh Keno American Antiques, a gallery in Manhattan dealing in fine eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century American furniture and decorative arts. During the past 18 years, he has helped build some of the top institutional and private collections of American furniture and decorative arts. Actively involved in the field of American antiques since childhood, he was a fellow at Historic Deerfield and visiting scholar at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. After receiving a B.A. in art history from Hamilton College in 1979, Leigh came to New York City and joined William Doyle Galleries, where he was director of the American furniture department. In 1984 he joined Christie's, first serving as vice president of their appraisal company and later joining the American furniture department as a senior specialist. In that capacity, Leigh appraised items across the country and negotiated the consignment of important examples of American furniture. From 2001 through 2005, he and his twin brother wrote monthly furniture and design columns for House Beautiful and This Old House magazines, respectively. In November 2000, Warner Books published Hidden Treasures: Searching for Masterpieces of American Furniture , a book both Keno brothers wrote with Joan Barzilay Freund. Leigh has co-authored two groundbreaking articles on Boston's Georgian chairs for the 1996 and 1998 editions of the journal American Furniture, published by the Chipstone Foundation. Leigh is a friend of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a friend of Historic Deerfield, and a member of the National Antique and Art Dealers Association of America and the Antiques Dealers Association of America. For the past ten years, Leigh Keno and his brother Leslie have appeared regularly as appraisers on the hit PBS series Antiques Roadshow , and, since October 2003, co-hosted a show on WGBH called Find! , which celebrates the world of design, style, antiques and furnishings. Leigh Keno lectures extensively across the country and with his twin, participates as an auctioneer for various charity events throughout the United States.
Leslie Keno (New York, N.Y.), is senior vice president, senior specialist, and director of American furniture and decorative arts at Sotheby's in New York. Leslie and his brother Leigh were passionate about antiques at a very young age and were very fortunate to know what path in life they wanted to pursue. Much of their childhood was one continuous treasure hunt for antiques, and on the front page of their first joint diary they declared "Leigh and Leslie ... twelve years old ... at this time ... we are antique dealers." Since that moment on, they have never stopped doing what they love. Born in upstate New York, Leslie graduated from Williams College with honors in American art. While at Williams, he carried out an intensive study of early American furniture from the Charles M. Davenport collection, which culminated in a catalog and exhibition of the collection at the Williams College Museum of Art. During his tenure of nearly 24 years at Sotheby's he has been responsible for successfully selling numerous important single-owner sales of American furniture and decorative arts, including the collections of: Mr. and Mrs. Adolph H. Meyer, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Paul Sax, Mr. and Mrs. Lammot du Pont Copeland, and Mr. and Mrs. Walter K. Jeffords, and the property of the Goddard Family, to name but a few. Numerous record-breaking sales of American furniture achieved during Leslie Keno's tenure have received international attention, increasing the public's awareness and appreciation of the great beauty and majesty of America's unique cultural heritage. In addition to writing monthly magazine articles with his brother Leigh and co-authoring Hidden Treasures , Leslie Keno has been published in Sotheby's Encyclopedia of Furniture and the American Ceramic Circle Journal . Leslie and his brother Leigh believe in the extraordinary benefits of television as a powerful teaching tool to inspire young people and get them excited about material culture and history. They appear regularly as appraisers on the hit PBS series Antiques Roadshow , and they co-host Find! , which premiered on WGBH in October 2003 to celebrate a world of design, style, antiques, and furnishings. Leslie is a member of the board of directors of Sotheby's North and South America and lectures extensively on antiques. He and Leigh volunteer each year as benefit auctioneers for various charity events across the country.
Alan Charles Kors (Wallingford, Pa.), has been teaching European intellectual history since 1968 at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is professor of history and holds the George H. Walker Endowed Term Chair. He has published extensively on the conceptual revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and was recently editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment , an international project published in four volumes in 2002. Kors was confirmed by the United States Senate in 1992 to the National Council on the Humanities, serving in that capacity for six years. He has served on the executive boards of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and The Historical Society, where he is on the Board of Governors. He has done two videotape and audio courses for The Teaching Company, one on "The Birth of the Modern Mind" and one on "Voltaire: The Mind of the Enlightenment." Kors has been involved in the defense of academic freedom since his arrival at the University of Pennsylvania. His colleagues at Penn have elected him four times to University and School Committees on Academic Freedom and Responsibility, and since 1998 he has been chairman of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. He has received two awards, the Lindback Foundation Award and the Ira Abrams Memorial Award, for distinguished college teaching, numerous awards for the defense of academic freedom, and, in 2005, The Conference on Value Inquiry Award for "extraordinary contributions to the appreciation and advancement of human values." He writes and lectures widely on academic life. In 1998, he coauthored, with Harvey Silvergate, The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses.
Lewis Lehrman (Greenwich, Conn.), is currently a senior partner, L. E. Lehrman & Co., an investment firm he established, and the co-founder and co-chairman of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, which promotes the teaching of history in American high schools and colleges through seminars, workshops and an extensive Web site featuring original documents. Lehrman was the Cardinal Cooke honoree in 1983 of the Archdiocese of New York for his early work in developing the Inner City Scholarship Fund. He has been a trustee of the American Enterprise Institute, the Morgan Library, the Manhattan Institute and the Heritage Foundation. He is a former Chairman of the Committee on Humanities of the Yale University Council. In April of 1987, Lehrman joined Morgan Stanley & Company, investment bankers, as a senior advisor and a director of Morgan Stanley Asset Management. In 1988, he became a managing director of the firm. Lehrman has written books and articles on American history, national security, and economic and monetary policy. He has co-authored the book Money and the Coming World Order (1976). He has also written on economic, foreign policy and national security issues in publications such as Harper's , the Washington Post , the New York Times , the Wall Street Journal , National Review , and Policy Review . He actively lectures and writes on economic and American history. He has published numerous articles on Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, and other historical figures, in addition to teaching a seminar on Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg College. He is the managing partner of the Gilder Lehrman Collection, a national resource of American historical documents, now on deposit at the New-York Historical Society, where he is also a trustee. Lehrman is co-founder of the Lincoln Prize, given annually to the best scholarly work published on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. The Gilder Lehrman Institute is a co-sponsor of the George Washington Book Prize. Lehrman is a trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale University for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, which gives the annual Frederick Douglass Prize. He is chairman of The Lehrman Institute, a public policy research and grant making Foundation founded in 1972. The Lehrman Institute created The Lincoln Institute, which has promoted the study of America's 16th president--particularly through five Web sites (see: www.abrahamlincoln.org).
Judith Martin (Washington, D.C.), known to her many readers as "Miss Manners," was born in Washington, D.C., "a perfect lady in an imperfect society" and is considered the pioneer mother of today's civility movement. Martin's "Miss Manners" newspaper column-distributed thrice-weekly by United Features Syndicate and carried in more than 200 newspapers in the United States and abroad-has chronicled the continuous rise and fall of American manners since 1978. Since 1996 she has been writing an additional "Miss Manners" column for the Microsoft Network, and she is also a columnist at Child magazine. Martin is also a novelist and journalist and, as the nation's leading civility expert, a frequent lecturer and guest on national television and radio shows. As a reporter, feature writer, and critic, she spent 25 years at The Washington Post , where she was one of the original members of the Style and Weekend sections. In addition to her most recent book, Miss Manners Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior (Freshly Updated) (2005), Martin has written many others, including Star-Spangled Manners: In Which Miss Manners Defends American Etiquette (For a Change) (2002), Miss Manners' Guide to Domestic Tranquility: The Authoritative Manual for Every Civilized Household, However Harried(2000); Miss Manners' Basic TrainingTM: The Right Thing to Say (1998); Miss Manners' Basic TrainingSUP>TM: Communication (1996); Miss Manners' Basic TrainingTM: Eating (1997); Miss Manners Rescues Civilization from Sexual Harassment, Frivolous Lawsuits, Dissing and Other Lapses in Civility(1996). She also has written two novels, Style and Substance (1986) and Gilbert (1983). She is also the author of Common Courtesy: In Which Miss Manners Solves the Problem that Baffled Mr. Jefferson(1985). She is a graduate of Wellesley College and has been awarded honorary degrees.
The Papers of George Washington (Charlottesville, Va.), was established in 1969 at the University of Virginia, under the joint auspices of the university and the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union, to publish a complete edition of Washington's correspondence. Letters written to Washington, as well as letters and documents written by him, will eventually be published in the complete edition that will consist of approximately 90 volumes. Fifty-two volumes are now finished. The new edition is supported financially by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, as well as the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association and the University of Virginia. The staff spent much of the first ten years of the project's life collecting Washington documents from repositories and private owners all over the United States and Europe. The 135,000 Washington documents now deposited in photographic form in the project's offices represent one of the richest collections of American historical manuscripts extant. There is almost no facet of research on life and enterprise in the late colonial and early national periods that will not be enhanced by material from these documents. The publication of Washington's papers will make this source material available not only to scholars, but also to all Americans interested in the founding of their nation. Theodore J. Crackel, editor-in-chief of the Papers of George Washington Project, will accept the National Humanities Medal on behalf of the project.
The National Endowment for the Humanities gratefully acknowledges The President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities for its generous support of the 2005 National Humanities Medals.