ACLS News
ACLS President Emeritus Awarded National Humanities Medal
3/1/2011
We at the American Council of Learned Societies are delighted to extend our congratulations to ACLS President Emeritus Stanley N. Katz on his receipt of the 2010 National Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities. President Obama presented the award at the White House on Wednesday, March 2. Watch video of the medal presentation ceremony (25:41 minutes; Stan Katz starts at 20:40.).
The National Humanities Medal "honors individuals or groups whose work has deepened the nation's understanding of the humanities, broadened our citizens' engagement with the humanities, or helped preserve and expand Americans' access to important resources in the humanitites." For a full list of this year's awardees, see the National Endowment for the Humanities announcement.
Stan, now lecturer with rank of professor and director of the Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at the Woodrow Wilson School, served as president of ACLS from 1986 to 1997. During his tenure, as the NEH announcement states,
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. . . he led the ACLS . . . through the minefield of the culture wars, a time when funding for the humanities was scarce but intellectual opportunities were opening up all over the world. In his report as president of ACLS in 1997, he wrote 'I have taken it as a principle of our international work that scholarship be insulated from politics and that the Council advance academic principles by practical work as well as by advocacy.' [The report was published as ACLS Occasional Paper No. 38.] Under his leadership, the ACLS led scholarly exchanges with China, Vietnam, and Cuba, and with newly liberated institutions in Eastern Europe. For the bicentennial of the Constitution, the ACLS developed a new focus on the study of constitutionalism, promoting international conferences and exchanges, and supporting new scholarship. This led to the 1993 publication of Constitutionalism and Democracy: Transitions in the Contemporary World, which Katz coedited.
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Stan has been a strong and steady public voice for the humanities throughout his long and distinguished career. We congratulate him on this well-deserved honor and are honored to enjoy an enduring connection to him.
Categories: ACLS