The medals are named in memory of Wilbur L. Cross, who served as dean of the Graduate School 1916-30 and as governor of Connecticut 1931-39. The awards were presented by Anne M. Briscoe '49 Ph.D., past president of the Graduate School Alumni Association, and Stephen K. Scher '56, '66 Ph.D., a member of the Wilbur Cross Committee. The names of the 1996 recipients and their award citations follow:
Heidi I. Hartmann '74 Ph.D.
Courageous pioneer, educator, outstanding scholar; you are today's foremost analyst and advocate for policy issues related to women: pay equity, welfare reform, child care, family and medical leave, and the feminization of poverty. You are the premier expert in the field of the political economy of gender. You first distinguished yourself on the national scene during your eight years on the staff of the National Research Council-National Academy of Sciences, producing many trailblazing and influential reports on crucial issues for women on employment and comparable worth. Leaving the Academy in 1987 to further your mission to expand public awareness of the issues, despite some personal financial sacrifice, you co-founded the Institute for Women's Policy Research. A think tank that researches and publishes statistics on women's economic status for use in the political arena, the Institute has made major contributions to the national and Congressional debate on the role of women in American society. An economist of exceptional intellectual ability, you received proper recognition when you were awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 1994 for your prominent role in public life as an effective voice for women.
For your pioneering leadership in moving our country toward a political economy of justice, the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association proudly confers on you its highest honor, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal.
James Thomas Laney '50 B.A., '54 B.D., '66 Ph.D., '93 L.H.D.
Outstanding U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, Emory University President, missionary, pastor, teacher of ethics and Dean of Emory's Candler School of Theology, your distinguished career resembles in essence that of Dean Cross in whose memory we honor our most renowned alumni. Your effective leadership has born the stamp of personal integrity, moral passion, clear vision and steady commitment to justice. These qualities, nourished by a faith deeply rooted and expressed eloquently, elicit loyalty and trust from those around you. As educator, whether as Candler's Dean or Emory's President, your stewardship led to lasting achievements. As Ambassador, you artfully represent our country's concern for peace on the Korean Peninsula. Your other interests and service include the Board of Directors of the Atlanta Symphony, Chair of the Board of Ethics of the Atlanta Committee on the Olympic Games, and The Atlanta Project, to name a few. Your wise counsel has been repeatedly sought by your colleagues and you have served your alma mater devotedly as a member of the Yale University Council.
For your distinguished service to God, to Country and to Yale, the Graduate School Alumni Association proudly adds its highest honor to your other Yale honors, the Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters and the Divinity School Distinguished Alumnus Award, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal.
Miriam Usher Chrisman '62 Ph.D.
Distinguished scholar among American Reformation historians, your learning and leadership have transformed the study of sixteenth-century Europe on both sides of the Atlantic. Your scholarship has single-handedly turned Reformation-era Strasbourg into a teeming laboratory of modern historical investigation. From the publication of your revised doctoral thesis, "Strasbourg and the Reform" 1967, a history of religious reform as a social process, to your massive publications of 1982, "Lay Culture," "Learned Culture" and "Bibliography of Strasbourg Imprints," each of which offered unparalleled views of writing, printing and reading in a Reformation- era city, to your new book, "Conflicting Visions of Reform," published this spring in your vigorous retirement, and which uncovers Strasbourg's ascending spiral of spiritual creativity during the era of the Reformation, your scholarship has recast our understanding of the Reformation's scope and dynamics, and has thoroughly reoriented the ways historians study it. Inspired to begin a scholarly career in your forties by your neighbor and mentor, the late Elizabeth Deering Hanscom, the first woman to receive a Ph.D. from Yale, you in turn became internationally renowned as a mentor and supporter of students at the University of Massachusetts and across Europe and America.
For your exemplary scholarship and your inspiring leadership in the history of Reformation Europe, the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association now confers on you its highest honor, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal.
Marie Borroff '56 Ph.D.
Medievalist, translator, poet, modernist, editor, explorer of computers, you move with ease from one challenge to another, and you advance significantly each enterprise to which you turn your talents. The revised version of your brilliant dissertation on the linguistically difficult Middle English poem, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Stylistic and Metrical Study," published by the Yale Press in 1962, won you international recognition. Another tour de force, also a verse translation of a poem, "Pearl," by the same author, is poetically delightful and a poem in its own right. Your courses in Old and Middle English, the History of the English Language and Modern Poetry have been rated outstanding by several generations of students. Your early studies of computers and poetic composition were the first in that novel field. Now your videotape course, part of Yale's Great Teachers Series, is being enjoyed by diverse audiences who applaud your skill as expositor. The first woman to attain the rank of full professor in the Yale Department of English, first as William Lampson Professor and then as Sterling Professor, you held many important posts in the department and the university during your 36 years of service.
In recognition of your brilliant scholarship, distinguished service to Yale and extraordinary creativity, the Yale Graduate School Association proudly confers on you its highest honor, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal.
David C. McClelland '41 Ph.D.
Towering leader of 20th-century scientific psychology, in 1987 you were awarded the highest honor bestowed by your peers in the American Psychological Society: the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. A great teacher as well as a prolific investigator for over fifty years, you have elucidated more aspects of human achievement motivation, power and power motivation, and the relationship of psychogenic motives to physiology, health and disease than can be adequately summarized here. You designed training courses to raise achievement motivation in businessmen and, not confining your studies to the "ivory tower," you established a consulting firm in Boston to test your hypotheses in the real world; you also made these methods available for economic development in third-world countries, and you showed its relevance to many other problems such as substance abuse. Thirty years as Professor of Psychology at Harvard University were preceded by 14 on the faculty at Wesleyan, your alma mater, where you later served as Trustee. In "retirement" as a Research Professor at Boston University, you are involved in cutting-edge work in the emerging field of psychoneuroimmunology.
In recognition of your outstanding contributions as an interdisciplinary social scientist, the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association is proud to present to you its highest honor, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal.