Wilson School professor Stanley Katz will be awarded the American Historical Association's Troyer-Steele Anderson Prize at the group's general meeting Jan. 6. The Anderson Prize is given to an individual who has made an "exemplary contribution to the Association's mission," according to the group's website.
The prize is for "people who served the discipline of history through unusual concern, unusual effort for making the professional lives of historians better — students and especially professors," said Anthony Grafton, the association's vice president for its professional decision and a professor in the history department.
Katz, who currently serves as a trustee for the group's new National Center for History, deserved the prize because of his prominent role in "maintaining good professional standards of conduct and has helped the association over many years," Grafton said. Katz has also "worked to improve school history education and law schools. He's just a tremendously civic person."
Katz's contribution came "in many ways over his entire career ... He served on governing bodies and advised on many questions of legal difficulties," Grafton said, citing Katz's recent involvement in an adjudication process for Emory University involving a historian accused of falsifying information.
Katz "was quite thrilled," he said in an email, when he learned of the award in January, noting his past service with the organization as its vice president for research and on various book prize and other committees.
The American Historical Association is the largest historical society in the United States. Its website describes it as a nonprofit membership organization founded by Congress "to promote historical studies, the collection and preservation of historical documents and artifacts, and the dissemination of historical research."
Katz is currently faculty chair of the Wilson School's undergraduate program and director of the University's Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies.
He is also president emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies.
Currently, he is working on research about constitutional law, philanthropy and nonprofit organizations and the reasons why the United States has been so reluctant to participate in the international human rights system. His various interests are connected by his general interest in social justice, he said.
Katz earned a B.A. in English history and literature and an M.A. and Ph.D. in American history from Harvard.
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