3 Academics Are Among Recipients of National Humanities Medals

In addition to presenting the 2009 National Medals of Arts on Thursday at the White House, President Obama honored the recipients of the 2009 National Humanities Medals. They included three academic scholars: Annette Gordon-Reed, a law professor at New York Law School and history professor at Rutgers University who won a Pulitzer Prize for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family; David Levering Lewis, a history professor at New York University who won Pulitzer Prizes for both volumes of his biography of W.E.B. Du Bois; and William H. McNeill, a retired historian at the University of Chicago known for a series of seminal thematic works in worldwide history, notably The Rise of the West, Plagues and Peoples, and The Pursuit of Power. Also honored were Robert A. Caro, the acclaimed biographer of Lyndon B. Johnson; Philippe de Montebello, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Albert H. Small, a philanthropist and collector; Theodore C. Sorensen, the speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy; and Elie Wiesel, the human-rights activist and moral voice.