Historian honors Dean's Scholars

Garry Wills, famed author of 'Lincoln at Gettysburg,' spoke at a forum honoring outstanding students. and Edward Sherwin The School of Arts and Sciences presented its top academic honor last night as 20 University students were recognized as Dean's Scholars during the annual Dean's Forum in the University Museum's Harrison Auditorium. First held in 1984, the Dean's Forum aims to bring together students, faculty and leading intellectual figures to recognize academic excellence as well as to discuss the state of liberal arts. This year's Dean's Forum Lecturer was Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills, author of Lincoln at Gettysburg, this year's Penn Reading Project text. SAS Dean Samuel Preston praised the students -- including nine undergraduates, 10 graduate students and one student in the College of General Studies -- for their "exceptional academic performance and their sense of intellectual adventure." The undergraduate award recipients included four seniors, three juniors and two sophomores. They were chosen for their high grade point averages, rigorous courseloads and extracurricular pursuits. SAS Graduate Dean Walter Licht, College Dean Richard Beeman and CGS Dean Richard Hendrix helped Preston recognize the award recipients, presenting them with a certificate and a signed copy of Wills' new book, John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity. Preston described Wills, 63, as "America's most prominent public intellectual." He added that Wills' text was selected for the 2,500 members of the freshman class due to the work's "scholarly rigor, continuing vitality of the subject matter and the beauty and clarity of [Wills'] writing." Wills spoke for 40 minutes on "Public Support for the Humanities" in front of the crowd of approximately 150 people. He sought to make a "convincing" case for continued government support for the arts and humanities, but began by dispelling the most common argument for his position -- that art is an essential part of democratic societies. "Democracy and the arts are natural partners, right?" Wills asked. "Well, if you look at history -- wrong." He cited William Shakespeare's tragedies, Italian Renaissance sculpture and Giuseppe Verdi's operas as examples of classic art produced under oppressive regimes. He added that even those works were often censored by the nobles and clergy who served as the artists' main patrons. "The only safe art was the art and service of the state," Wills added. Indeed, when compared to the long history of artistic expression, Wills noted that "democracy is a rare and late development." The separation of church and state during the founding of the United States as the turning point for artistic freedom, he added. Even though Wills spent most of his speech proving that art and literature have flourished under harsh conditions, he asserted that "that does not mean repressive conditions should be imposed." Wills maintained that the source of government support for the humanities was the Constitution itself. The document, he said, gives Congress the power to grant copyrights and patents "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts." "We can support the arts without imposing a governmental agenda on them," he noted. Dean's Scholar Laura Heffernan, a College sophomore, praised Wills' address. "Dr. Wills really brought the arts down to terms people can understand and appreciate," she said. Wills, a History professor at Northwestern University, won the Pulitzer in 1992 for Lincoln at Gettysburg. Author of more than 20 books, he has also twice won the National Book Critics Award and a Peabody Award for broadcasting.