Names New Board of Trustees Chairman
News Release Date: October 27, 2010
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Research Triangle Park, N.C. The National Humanities Center board of trustees has elected Alan Brinkley as its new chairman. He succeeds businessman and philanthropist Carl Pforzheimer III.
A trustee of the Center since 2003, Brinkley is the Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1991. He served as University Provost from 2003 to 2009 and as chair of the Department of History from 2000 to 2003. In 1998-99, he was the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University. Brinkley was a Fellow at the National Humanities Center in 1988-89 and is the first chairman of the Center's board to have also been a Fellow.
A leading scholar of American history, Brinkley's published works include Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (1982), which won the 1983 National Book Award; The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (1995); Liberalism and Its Discontents (1998); Franklin Delano Roosevelt (2009); The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century (2010); and two American history textbooks: American History: A Survey (1982 and subsequent editions), and The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People (1992 and subsequent editions).
His essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in scholarly journals and in such periodicals as the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, the New York Times Magazine, the New Republic, Time, Newsweek, the Atlantic, Harper's, Vanity Fair, the Times Literary Supplement, and the London Review of Books.
Brinkley was the recipient of the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize at Harvard in 1987 and the Great Teacher Award at Columbia in 2003. He is chair of the board of trustees of the Century Foundation and a trustee of Oxford University Press. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
About the National Humanities Center, Brinkley says, "It is a great privilege to serve as chair of the Center's board of trustees, succeeding the many distinguished leaders who have done so much to strengthen this great institution. At a time when the humanities are facing difficulties in many parts of the world, the National Humanities Center remains a priceless institution for the creation of important scholarship and the advancement of education—constantly widening its goals and its reach."
"We have been extremely fortunate to have Alan as a board member for the past seven years," says Geoffrey Harpham, president and director of the National Humanities Center, "and we are delighted to have him continue his service in his new role as chairman of our board. The remarkable contributions of our trustees have been essential to the Center's success, and Alan Brinkley is certain to continue the tradition of distinguished service by his predecessors."
About the National Humanities Center
The National Humanities Center is the nation's leading independent institute for advanced study in all fields of the humanities. Privately incorporated and governed by a distinguished board of trustees from academic, professional, and public life, the Center provides a national focus for the best work in the liberal arts, drawing attention to the enduring value of ancient and modern history, language and literature, ethical and moral reflection, artistic and cultural traditions, and critical thought in every area of humanistic investigation. By encouraging excellence in scholarship, the Center seeks to insure the continuing strength of the liberal arts and to affirm the importance of the humanities in American life.