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Updated: National Humanities Medals awarded to creative writing professor, renowned philosopher

Creative writing professor and Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri, as well as novelist and philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein GS ’77, have been named recipients of the 2014 National Humanities Medal.

President Barack Obama, joined by first lady Michelle Obama '85, presented medals to the recipients on Thursday, Sept. 10.

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The National Humanities medal is bestowed upon an individual or organization whose work has helped the nation’s understanding of the human experience and broadened citizens’ engagement with the humanities. The White House announced this year’s recipients on Sept. 3.

“One of our great poets, Emily Dickinson, once said that ‘truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it,’ ” Obama said during the ceremony. “The recipients of the National Medals for the Arts and the Humanities are here not only because they’ve shared rare truths, often about their own experience, but because they’ve told rare truths about the common experiences that we have as Americans and as human beings.”

Goldstein is the third philosopher to receive the National Humanities Medal in the award’s history.

“Philosophical argument without emotion is empty, but emotional argument without philosophy is blind. Rationality is a good thing for us,” Goldstein said in an interview.

Goldstein said she believes that novels are a way to “engage with the whole of the person” and a unique form to explore embedded questions. She noted that many of her novels, such as "Properties of Light,"also delve into aspects of science.

“I disagree with the presentation of humanities versus sciences as an exclusive. Science always brings one into philosophy and philosophy into science,” Goldstein said, noting that the majority of her readers and initial supporters, including her nominator for the MacArthur Award, are scientists.

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She described the honor as a profound encouragement for herself and for all people, especially young women, to follow their passions.

Goldstein said she grew up in an Orthodox Jewish community, attended an all-girls school which discouraged women from pursuing a college education or stepping beyond the role of a traditional wife and mother. However, she explained that she realized that there was a divergence between her values and inherited faith when she was introduced to Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza as a 14 year old.

“The story of Spinoza was told as a cautionary tale of a ‘bad boy.’ But I was immediately interested because I was already an atheist,” Goldstein said. “Yet one thing my teacher said was that Spinoza kept his heresy to himself until his parents died because it is a big thing in Jewish culture to not shame your families.”

Having made the vow to keep her atheism obscured until her parents pass away, Goldstein went on to pursue an academic career in philosophy. She explained that as one of the first female philosophy students at the University, she often found that there was a hostile environment towards women.

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“You really felt that you were woman,” Goldstein said."Being the only woman in many seminar classes, you feel like if you say something stupid, your entire gender is being judged. It’s like you were validating the stereotype."

Goldstein explained that after becoming a professor of philosophy at Barnard College, she began exploring philosophy, especially questions of identity and peculiarity, through writing novels. This unconventional undertaking, she said, provoked even more challenges from her peers and institution due to her gender, and she noted that sometimes academia was not supportive of her work.

“When I wrote my first novel, the initial response was, ‘Oh she’s not serious, she must be delirious,’ ” Goldstein said. “Of all the humanities, I think philosophy and economics have the worst statistics for women. It’s far worse than some fields in [Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics].”

Lahiri declined multiple requests for comment. Shejoined the Lewis Center for the Arts’ facultyJuly 1.

Lahiri was born to Bengali parents in London and grew up in Rhode Island. Her work includes a 1999 collection of short stories, “Interpreter of Maladies,” which won the Pulitzer Prize, and a 2013 novel, “The Lowland,” which was a National Book Award finalist.

The National Humanities Medal, inaugurated in 1997, is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.