Harvard prof to get nation's top honor

The Harvard Crimson CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (U-WIRE) -- Harvard Professor Robert Coles, an expert in the field of social ethics, will receive the nation's highest civilian honor -- the Presidential Medal of Freedom -- on Thursday. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is awarded by the president to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to national security interests, world peace or other significant public and private endeavors. Coles -- a child psychiatrist, a recipient of the 1981 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Prize, and a 1973 Pulitzer Prize winner -- has worked to understand the lives of children from a variety of backgrounds. As a neuropsychiatrist in the Air Force, Coles began working with children undergoing the stress of school desegregation when he was stationed in Louisiana during the 1960s. The author of more than 50 books and 1,200 articles, reviews and essays since 1961, Coles says he "prefers using words that I was seeing and feeling rather than the words that I use when I write in technical journals." He joined Harvard in 1977. After addressing a conference on the homeless Wednesday in Washington, D.C., Coles said he will attend "a two-hour shindig" at the White House with the 14 other Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients. "I had to buy a suit for the occasion," Coles said, explaining that his three children told him that he could not wear his usual corduroys and sweaters to the ceremony. Other recipients of this year's award include: Brooke Astor, the New York philanthropist; Justin Dart, Jr., considered the father of the Americans with Disabilities Act; Albert Shanker, the late president of the American Federation of Teachers; and Wilma Mankiller, who became the first women to be elected as the leader of an American Indian tribe.