The Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities
The Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, established by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1972, is the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. Read more >
2026
Ruth R. Wisse, scholar of Yiddish literature and Jewish literature and culture, will deliver the 52nd Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities. Dr. Wisse will deliver the lecture, titled “A Message from the ‘Blue and White’ in the ‘Red, White, and Blue,’” on Wednesday, March 25 at the Trump Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., at 7 p.m. In her lecture, Wisse will discuss the deep connections between Jewish culture and ideas and the founding and growth of the United States and speak to the lessons that 2,500 years of Jewish experience hold for the next millennium of American progress.
2023
Ruth J. Simmons, professor, author, and president emerita of Prairie View A&M, Brown University, and Smith College, was NEH”s 51st Anniversary Jefferson Lecturer. She delivered the 2023 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, “Facing History to Find a Better Future,” on September 26, 2023, at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
2022
Dr. Andrew Delbanco, President of The Teagle Foundation, was NEH”s 50th Anniversary Jefferson Lecturer and made his presentation in October, 2022 at President Abraham Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C. Time magazine donned him “America's Best Social Critic” in 2001, and he received a 2011 National Humanities Medal “for his writings on higher education and the place classic authors hold in history and contemporary life.”
More about Dr. Delbanco >
The National Humanities Medal
The National Humanities Medal honors individuals or groups whose work has deepened the nation's understanding of the humanities and broadened our citizens' engagement with history, literature, languages, philosophy, and other humanities subjects, or helped preserve and expand Americans’ access to important resources in the humanities. Inaugurated in 1997, up to 12 National Humanities Medals can be awarded each year.
From 1989 to 1996, NEH awarded a similar prize known as the Charles Frankel Prize to recognize persons for outstanding contributions to the public’s understanding of the humanities. Complete lists of the winners of the National Humanities Medal and Frankel Prize are online at the NEH.gov website.
Past Recipients include:
Joan Didion
Theodore C. Sorensen
2020
Kay Coles James
O. James Lighthizer
National World War II Museum
2019
The Claremont Institute
Teresa Lozano Long
Patrick O’Connell
James Patterson
2015
Rudolfo Anaya
José Andrés
Ron Chernow
Louise Glück
Terry Gross
Louis Menand
Elaine Pagels
Prison University Project
Wynton Marsalis
James McBride
Abraham Verghese
Isabel Wilkerson