 | Howard R. Lamar |
Howard R. Lamar, former president of Yale University, has been honored by a group of alumni, including many former students and current friends, who came together to endow a professorship in his name.
Designed to honor a campus leader who helped to shape programs in foreign language, environmental studies and the humanities, as well as his own Department of History, the Lamar Professorship will be awarded to a distinguished faculty scholar, in any academic discipline, who demonstrates excellence in teaching and research.
Retired since 1994 but still very active on campus, Lamar has been hailed as a seminal thinker in the history of the American West and as a consummate University citizen. He earned his Ph.D. here in 1951 and stayed on as a lecturer, moving steadily through the ranks to serve as chair of the history department and as Sterling Professor. He was dean of Yale College from 1979 to 1985 and president of the University from 1992 to 1993.
"Howard Lamar is a shining example of distinction as a scholar, teacher and University leader," says President Richard C. Levin. "This chair will not only honor his name in perpetuity, but also encourage generations of Yale faculty to emulate his skill, grace and good humor."
When he arrived at Yale after World War II, Lamar was already deeply interested in the way real men and women shape history. Coincidentally, Yale had just acquired a landmark collection of books, documents and ephemera of the American West. Lamar mined this collection for his doctoral thesis and his later books, which included "Dakota Territory 18611889," "The Far Southwest, 18461912: A Territorial History" and, more recently, "The New Encyclopedia of the American West," which is regarded in the field as an indispensable reference book. These works have been praised for injecting a new sense of realism into the study of western history, while Lamar's spirit of intellectual adventure has been credited with inspiring a generation of graduate students. Many of these students later emerged as leading voices of "New Western History" in the 1980s.
In 2000, Yale established the Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders to further the historical and comparative exploration of the frontier experience in North America and throughout the world. The center, where Lamar remains active, supports graduate study in the Departments of History and American Studies.
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