Andrew Delbanco was excited to return to the White House this week—though for a different reason than the last time he visited, when he took a public tour as a child.
President Barack Obama, CC ’83, presented the National Humanities Medal to Delbanco, the director of Columbia’s Center for American Studies and the Julian Clarence Levi Professor in Humanities, in a ceremony at the White House on Monday.
Delbanco was one of nine recipients, including poet John Ashbery and economist Amartya Sen, to be honored for work in the humanities.
“Many of the ideas in my work about education and American literature and history have been worked out over the years in my classes at Columbia with help from Columbia students and colleagues,” Delbanco, who has taught at Columbia since 1985, told Spectator. “I have felt very lucky for a quarter-century and feel that my time at Columbia has made me a better writer. I’m very thrilled to be getting this honor.”
Delbanco is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and other publications, and was named “America’s Best Social Critic” by Time Magazine in 2001.
According to a statement from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which decides the recipients, the medal “honors individuals or groups whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the humanities.”
Eric Foner, the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History, said that he was very pleased to see Delbanco’s scholarship recognized.
“He has a great breadth of interest in knowledge, and he has the kind of public persona they’re looking for,” Foner said. “He’s a public intellectual in an old-fashioned way both inside and outside the academic world. It’s great to see that recognized.”
Casey Blake, a history professor, said that Delbanco has contributed greatly to Columbia as director of the Center for American Studies, which Blake founded in 1999.
“I would say that he has quite dramatically expanded the scope of what American studies does,” Blake said. “He has made it an important site for the interdisciplinary study of American civic culture ... by bringing in distinguished practitioners in the arts, in journalism, and in public affairs to teach undergraduates at Columbia, and by forging partnerships between American studies and community-based organizations, like the Double Discovery Center.”
Students in Delbanco’s Equity in Higher Education class, which he teaches with former Dean of Students Roger Lehecka, spend four hours a week working with DDC students, getting one-on-one experiences with those who may have significant obstacles in getting to college.
Delbanco has often turned his critical eye to Columbia as well. In October, he gave a speech arguing for the University to devote more resources to the Core Curriculum and criticized administration for minimizing faculty input on admissions and financial aid issues.
Lehecka said that faculty debates in 1992 over whether to end need-blind admissions influenced Delbanco’s view of higher education.
“For the entire time he’s been at Columbia, he’s been a responsible citizen,” Lehecka said. “At a time when need-blind admissions was threatened, faculty members had made sure that it didn’t end.” It was then that Delbanco realized that he wanted to understand more about the issues involved, Lehecka said.
“He had to understand how universities worked to be a responsible faculty member,” he recalled.
Delbanco noted that the medal was originally named after Charles Frankel, a professor and chair of the philosophy department who taught at Columbia for over 30 years.
“It’s kind of a Columbia prize in a way, although most people don’t realize that.”
Jeremy Budd contributed reporting.
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