Yale Bulletin and Calendar

November 11, 2005|Volume 34, Number 11

John Lewis Gaddis (center) at the White House ceremony with First Lady Laura Bush and President George W. Bush.

Professor, alumni receive
National Humanities Medals

One Yale professor and three alumni are among 11 Americans who were awarded 2005 National Humanities Medals by President George W. Bush in a White House ceremony on Nov. 10.

They are John Lewis Gaddis, the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History and Political Science; alumni Richard Gilder '54 and Lewis Lehrman '60, who are co-founders of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale; and alumna Eva Brann, '56 Ph.D., a professor at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland.

Gaddis is one of the nation's most prominent historians of the Cold War and a leading authority on national security and international relations. He joined the Yale faculty in 1997.

His books include "The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947," "Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States: An Interpretive History," "Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy," "The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War," "The United States and the End of the Cold War: Reconsiderations, Implications, Provocations," "We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History," "The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past" and "Surprise, Security, and the American Experience."

Several of his earlier works have been reissued in later editions. His latest book, "The Cold War: A New History," will be published by Penguin 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. Since 2001, he has served as acting director of International Security Studies, and he chairs the International Affairs Council at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. He is on the advisory board of the Cold War International History Project and is currently working on a biography of George F. Kennan.

Gilder is co-founder and co-chair of the Gilder Lehrman Collection and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, which promotes interest in and study of American history through a variety of programs reaching all 50 states. The institute also fosters the teaching of history in American high schools and colleges through seminars, workshops, an extensive Web site and fellowship programs allowing scholars access to original documents in their collections. In 1998 Gilder and Lehrman established the Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale in their name. They are also founders and sponsors of the prestigious Lincoln Prize, the Frederick Douglass Book Award (presented by the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale) and the George Washington Book Prize.

In 1971, Gilder 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-chair, 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.

Lehrman is a senior partner in L.E. Lehrman & Co., an investment firm he established, and the co-founder and co-chair of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. In 1983, he was the Cardinal Cooke honoree 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 chair of the Committee on Humanities of the Yale University Council. In 1987, Lehrman joined Morgan Stanley & Company as a senior adviser 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, and he co-authored the book "Money and the Coming World Order." He lectures and writes on economic and American history, contributing articles on those subjects to such publications as Harper's, the Washington Post, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and National Review. In addition to his writing on historical figures, he teaches a seminar on Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg College. He is the managing partner of the Gilder Lehrman Collection at the New York Historical Society, where he is also a trustee. Lehrman is a trustee of the Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale. He is chair of The Lehrman Institute, a public policy research and grant-making foundation established in 1972. The Lehrman Institute created The Lincoln Institute, which has promoted the study of America's 16th president, particularly through five websites.

Brann is a writer and long-time teacher at St. John's College, where she served as dean from 1990 to 1997. Her books include "Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and the Iliad," "What Then, Is Time?" "The Ways of Naysaying: No, Not, Nothing, and Nonbeing" and her most recent, "Open Secrets/Inward Prospects: Reflections on World and Soul." She formerly served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1988-1996).

Walter Berns, another recipient of the National Humanities Medal, taught at Yale in the past. He is a leading authority on the history of the U.S. Constitution.

Among the other winners of the medal are art historians and appraisers Leigh and Leslie Keno, familiar from the television program "Antiques Roadshow"; legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon; historian Alan Kors; and Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, who led the investigation into the 2003 destruction of the Iraq Museum.

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.

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