http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/15/books/15klug.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Two History Scholars Are to Split $1 Million Award
By DINITIA SMITH
Published: November 15, 2006
Two historians, John Hope Franklin and Yu Ying-shih, will share this year’s
$1 million John W. Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity.
It’s the prize that Alfred Nobel forgot. In 2000 Mr. Kluge, the billionaire,
gave $73 million to the Library of Congress for a scholarly center and other
projects, which now include the million-dollar prize. The award was
specifically intended for areas that the Nobel Prizes do not cover, like
history, political science, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, religion,
linguistics and criticism.
The prize is to be announced today in Washington.
Mr. Franklin, 91, is by far the better known, widely regarded as among the
first scholars to explore fully the role of African-Americans in the nation’
s history. The library’s announcement said that Mr. Franklin, emeritus
professor of history at Duke University, demonstrated that “blacks were
active agents in shaping their own and the nation’s history.” Until 1943,
when Mr. Franklin published his first book, “The Free Negro in North
Carolina,” historians had paid little attention to what was called “Negro
history.” His 1947 book, “From Slavery to Freedom,” remains a landmark
survey of the subject. Most recently, he has published a memoir, “Mirror to
America.”
In an interview from Durham, N.C., Mr. Franklin said he was still somewhat “
speechless” after learning of the award. At least some of the prize money,
he said, would go to a fellowship at Fisk University in Nashville, which he
endowed in memory of his wife, Aurelia, a librarian. The couple met at Fisk
when she was 16 and he 17.
The library’s announcement calls the second winner, Mr. Yu, 76, “the most
influential Chinese intellectual working in both the Chinese and American
worlds.” Mr. Yu, emeritus professor of history and Chinese studies at
Princeton, is an intellectual historian with a wide reach that spans
Confucianism and the modern world.
He has been particularly interested in the way Chinese intellectuals have
combined the religious and the secular, he said in an interview from his home
in Princeton. “They have a moral, political, social purpose,” he said, “as
compared to the West.” His most recent book is on the 12th-century Confucian
scholar Zhu Xi, who has been compared to Thomas Aquinas. Zhu helped codify
the Confucian canon and wrote extensive commentaries.
Mr. Yu has also been an outspoken supporter of the democracy movement in
China. But despite this, his work, much of which is in Chinese, is widely
read on the mainland.
Mr. Yu said he did not yet know what he would do with his prize money, though
“part of it will go to taxes.”
The library solicited nominations for the Kluge Prize from more than 2,000
people. The nominations were then winnowed and reviewed by a panel of
scholars. The ultimate decision was made by the librarian of Congress, James
H. Billington.
The prizes will be awarded at a ceremony on Dec. 5 at the library. Mr.
Franklin and Mr. Yu are to give symposiums on their work at the library next
year.
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