As professor at Harvard and Yale, as the youngest permanent trustee that Williams had ever had, as president of the College, and as vice president and then, for 12 years, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, you spoke passionately for the cause of the liberal arts and worked creatively and hard for their advancement. “To cope with and comprehend change,” you have said, “is one of the greatest contributions a liberal arts education can provide,” and change certainly marked your term here at Williams. The transformation in the residential system, the beginning of coeducation, the Ten Percent Program in admissions and the active recruitment of African-American students, the introduction into the curriculum of area studies and the development of the 4-1-4 academic calendar, the launching of the frrst Center for Environmental Studies at a liberal arts college and of the Graduate Program in Art History, the formation of the New England Small College Athletic Conference—with these innovations an already fine college adapted to the rapidly changing world of which it was a part, and those adaptations have shaped the Williams of today. By the time you had presided over a foundation known for its support of the liberal arts, your influence on the American academy had become so prominent and so ecumenical that you were awarded both the national Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal and the Phi Beta Kappa Award for Distinguished Service to the Humanities. There can be no more appropriate home for such a champion of the liberal arts than Williams, and no more appropriate moment for the College to express its gratitude than at this important milestone in its history. In recognition of your distinguished achievement in advancing the liberal arts, Williams College is proud to present you with its Bicentennial Medal.
Megamenu Social