Barzun Receives National Humanities Medal

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Jacques Barzun ’27, ’32 GSAS, noted cultural historian and University Professor Emeritus, was among the 10 winners of the 2010 National Humanities Medals for outstanding achievement in history, literature, education and cultural policy, President Barack Obama ’83 announced. The medals were presented at a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on March 2, 2011.

Barzun, who is 101 and lives in San Antonio, taught at Columbia for five decades and has written or edited more than 30 books. He was honored “for his distinguished career as a scholar, educator and public intellectual,” according to a news release issued by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Other winners were authors Wendell E. Berry, Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth; historians Bernard Bailyn and Gordon S. Wood; literary scholars Daniel Aaron, Roberto González Echevarria and Arnold Rampersad, and legal historian and higher education policy expert Stanley Nider Katz.

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