E-mail this pagePulitzer Prize Board announces new co-chairs
Amanda Bennett, an executive editor at Bloomberg News, and David Kennedy, Stanford historian
Media Contact:
Clare Oh, clare.oh@columbia.edu or (212) 854-5479
New York, NY (April 27, 2010) — Columbia University announced today that Amanda Bennett, an executive editor for Bloomberg News noted for her leadership in investigative journalism, and David Kennedy, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Stanford University professor and co-director of a center that studies the American West, have been elected the new co-chairs of the Pulitzer Prize Board.
Bennett and Kennedy have served on the Pulitzer Board since 2002. They replace Anders Gyllenhaal, executive editor of The Miami Herald, who recently completed his tenure as chair. Members of the Board serve a maximum of nine years while a chair serves for only one year.
Amanda Bennett
Bennett, who directs special projects and investigations for Bloomberg News, was the editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer from June, 2003, to November, 2006, and prior to that was editor of the Herald-Leader in Lexington, Kentucky. She also served for three years as managing editor/projects for The Oregonian in Portland.
Bennett served as a Wall Street Journal reporter for more than 20 years. A cum laude graduate of Harvard College, she held numerous posts at the paper, including auto industry reporter in Detroit in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Pentagon and State Department reporter, Beijing correspondent, management editor/reporter, national economics correspondent and, finally, chief of the Atlanta bureau until 1998, when she moved to The Oregonian.
In 1997 Bennett shared the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting with her Journal colleagues for far-ranging coverage of the struggle against AIDS; and in 2001 she led an Oregonian team to a Pulitzer for public service, providing an “unflinching examination” of problems within the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. She is on the board of the Loeb Awards. Projects by the Bloomberg projects and investigative team won a 2008 Loeb Award, a 2009 Overseas Press Club Award, and a 2010 Polk Award.
Bennett is the author of five books including In Memoriam (1998), co-authored with Terence B. Foley; The Man Who Stayed Behind, co-authored with Sidney Rittenberg (1993), and Death of the Organization Man (1991).
She is a member of National Association of Black Journalists, and The Pennsylvania Women’s Forum. She is on the board of the American Society of News Editors, and is on the board of directors of the Temple University Press and of the Rosenbach Museum, a Philadelphia museum of rare books.
David Kennedy
Kennedy, the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Emeritus, and co-director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford, is a native of Seattle and a 1963 Stanford graduate. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1968. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1967.
Kennedy teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in 20th century United States history, American political and social thought, American foreign policy, American literature, and the comparative development of democracy in Europe and America. Graduating seniors have four times elected him as Class Day speaker. In 1988 he received the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching, and in 2005 the Hoagland Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. He has also received the Stanford Alumni Association's Richard W. Lyman Award for faculty service. In 2008 the Yale University Graduate School presented him with its highest honor, the Wilbur Cross Medal.
Reflecting his interdisciplinary training in American studies, Kennedy's scholarship is notable for its integration of economic and cultural analysis with social and political history. His 1970 book, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, embraced the medical, legal, political, and religious dimensions of the subject and helped to pioneer the emerging field of women's history. Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980) used the history of American involvement in World War I to analyze the American political system, economy and culture in the early 20th century. Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (1999) recounts the history of the American people in the two great crises of the Great Depression and World War II. Kennedy is also the co-author of a textbook in American history, The American Pageant, now in its fourteenth edition.
Birth Control in America was honored with the John Gilmary Shea Prize in 1970 and the Bancroft Prize in 1971. Over Here was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1981. Freedom From Fear won the Pulitzer and Francis Parkman Prizes in 2000, as well as the English-Speaking Union’s Ambassador’s Prize, and the Commonwealth Club of California’s California Book Award Gold Medal.
Kennedy, who has lectured on American history around the world, served as chair of the Stanford History Department; director of Stanford's Program in International Relations; and associate dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences. Among his many affiliations, he has served on the advisory board for the Public Broadcasting System's "The American Experience" and on the board of Environmental Traveling Companions, a service organization for the handicapped.
Kennedy is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as the American Philosophical Society. In 1995-96, he was the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University. Since 2000, he has served as editor of the Oxford History of the United States.
