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 Dr.
Victor Davis Hanson, professor emeritus of Classics at California State
University, Fresno, will receive a National Humanities Medal from
President George W. Bush at a White House ceremony Thursday, Nov. 15.
Hanson, who co-founded the Classics Program at Fresno State, is one of
10 individuals and foundations to be honored with the Humanities Medal.
President Bush also will present 10 individuals with this year’s
National Medal of Arts.
The awards will be presented in an East Room ceremony. The President
will be joined by First Lady Laura Bush, Mrs. Lynne Cheney, Dana Gioia,
chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts, and Dr. Bruce Cole,
chairperson of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Hanson, a noted military historian and author, helped bring Fresno
State’s Classics Program to national prominence before retiring in 2004.
He still returns to the campus to lecture.
Since retiring, Hanson has been the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior
Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
“The Hoover Institution is honored to count Victor Davis Hanson among
those Hoover fellows who have been recognized with this award,” Hoover
director John Raisian said in a press release. “Victor’s honor is well
deserved, and a source of inspiration and pride for all of us.”
 The
National Humanities Medal, first awarded in 1989 as the Charles Frankel
Prize, honors individuals and organizations whose work has deepened the
nation's understanding of the humanities, broadened citizens' engagement
with the humanities, or helped preserve and expand America's access to
important humanities resources.
Hanson joined the Fresno State faculty in 1984 to initiate a Classics
Program. He is the author of hundreds of articles, book reviews,
scholarly papers and newspaper opinion pieces on matters ranging from
Greek, agrarian and military history to foreign affairs, domestic
politics, and contemporary culture.
The following is excerpted from the Hoover Institution (www.hoover.org)
biography of Hanson:
In 1991, Hanson was awarded the American Philological Association
Excellence in Teaching Award, which is given yearly to the country's top
undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin.
He also was a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Center
for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California
(1992–93), a visiting professor of classics at Stanford University
(1991–92), a recipient of the Eric Breindel Award for opinion journalism
(2002), and an Alexander Onassis Fellow (2001); he was named alumnus of
the year of the University of California, Santa Cruz (2002). He was also
the visiting Shifrin Chair of Military History at the U.S. Naval
Academy, Annapolis, Maryland (2002–03).
Hanson has authored articles, book reviews, and newspaper editorials on
Greek, agrarian, and military history and essays on contemporary
culture. He has written or edited thirteen books, including Warfare and
Agriculture in Classical Greece (1983; paperback ed., University of
California Press, 1998); The Western Way of War (Alfred Knopf, 1989; 2nd
paperback ed., University of California Press, 2000); Hoplites: The
Ancient Greek Battle Experience (Routledge, 1991; paperback ed., 1992);
The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western
Civilization (Free Press, 1995; 2nd paperback ed., University of
California Press, 2000); Fields without Dreams: Defending the Agrarian
Idea (Free Press, 1996; paperback ed,. Touchstone, 1997); The Land Was
Everything: Letters from an American Farmer (Free Press, 2000); The Wars
of the Ancient Greeks (Cassell, 1999; paperback ed., 2001); The Soul of
Battle (Free Press, 1999, paperback ed., Anchor/ Vintage, 2000); Carnage
and Culture (Doubleday, 2001; Anchor/Vintage, 2002); An Autumn of War
(Anchor/Vintage, 2002); Mexifornia: A State of Becoming (Encounter,
2003); Ripples of Battle (Doubleday, 2003) and “A War Like No Other: How
the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War” (Random House,
2005).
Hanson coauthored, with John
Heath, Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the
Recovery of Greek Wisdom (Free Press, 1998; paperback ed., Encounter
Press, 2000), and, with Bruce Thornton and John Heath, Bonfire of the
Humanities (ISI Books, 2001).
He has written essays, editorials, and reviews for the New York Times,
the Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, the New York
Post, National Review, American Heritage,
Policy Review,
Commentary, National Review, the Wilson Quarterly, the Weekly Standard,
Daily Telegraph, and Washington Times and has been interviewed often on
National Public Radio, the PBS Newshour, and C-Span BookTV.
Currently, Hanson is a weekly columnist for the National Review Online
and serves on the editorial board of Arion, the Military History
Quarterly, and City Journal, as well as the board of the Clariont
Institute.
Hanson was educated at the University of California, Santa Cruz (B.A.
1975), and the American School of Classical Studies (1978-79); he
received his Ph.D. in classics from Stanford University in 1980.
He currently lives and works on his family’s forty-acre tree and vine
farm near Selma, California, where he was born in 1953.
For more information, see White House press release at
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/11/20071114-7.html.
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