Bernard Bailyn Awarded University Professorship

President Bok yesterday awarded Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian Bernard Bailyn, currently Winthrop Professor of History, a University professorship, one of Harvard's highest academic honors.

In naming Bailyn the first Adams University Professor, Bok called him "one of the most distinguished scholars of American history" and praised his "gift for synthesizing masses of information into a coherent, comprehensive whole."

Bok added that he was "delighted that the first incumbent of a professorship named for a family that has played such an important role in American history is such a gifted interpreter of that history."

1949

A professor at Harvard since 1949, and the Winthrop Professor of History since 1966, Dailyn becomes the eighth present recipient of a University professorship, a position which enables its incumbent to teach and do research in any part of the University.

"I am extremely pleased and flattered," Bailyn said yesterday, adding he expects to continue to teach both departmental and Core courses.

"This is not only a well-deserved honor for Professor Bailyn, but it is also an honor for the entire department," Wallace T. MacCaffrey, Higginson Professor of History and the chairman of the department, said yesterday.

He added he did not expect Bailyn's teaching schedule to be affected by the new professorship. "Although he is now free to do whatever he pleases in any of the departments, I'm sure he will want to continue teaching as before," he said.

Bailyn, who is president of the American Historical Association, is on a year-long sabbatical at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., where he has been working on a two-part social history of the pre-industrial period. He has written or edited nearly a dozen books documenting a comprehensive history of the American colonial and revolutionary eras.

Not a Word

Donald Fleming, Trumbull Professor of American History, yesterday called the appointment "an excellent thing. As one of a handful of the most eminent historians Bailyn, was the obvious choice."

Oscar Handlin, the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor, yesterday wished Bailyn luck in his new position, which he said "makes one available for all sorts of odd jobs because since you don't have to do anything people assume you have nothing to do."

Handlin said when he became a University professor he was asked to take on various directorships, but he added. "Bud may be a tougher character than I."

Charles F. Adams '32 created the Professorship in 1979 in memory of five famous Adams forebears who attended Harvard, including two former presidents of the U.S.