Medal of Freedom Awarded to Yaddo Writer

Norman Podhoretz

Washington, DC (June 24, 2004) - Writer, literary critic, commentator, and editor Norman Podhoretz was among 13 Americans honored Wednesday with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, at a White House ceremony.

President Bush said Mr. Podhoretz "ranks among the most prominent American editors of the 20th century" and praised him for always writing and speaking "with directness and honesty." Noting that speaking the truth sometimes carries a cost, the President said Mr. Podhoretz has never been a man "to tailor his opinions to please others…yet, over the years, he has only gained in stature among his fellow writers and thinkers. Today we pay tribute to this fierce intellectual man and his fine writing and his great love for our country."

From 1960 until 1995, Mr. Podhoretz served as editor-in-chief of Commentary, the American Jewish Committee magazine, where he is now an editor-at-large. In 1995, he became a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute. In addition to contributing articles to most major periodicals and authoring several books, he has lectured widely and appeared often on radio and television, covering a variety of topics ranging from literature to politics, to Jewish thought and culture.

Mr. Podhoretz, who has been a guest at Yaddo several times, is the author of many books, including Doings and Undoings: The Fifties and After in American Writing (1964), Making It (1968), Breaking Ranks: A Political Memoir (1979), The Present Danger (1980), Why We Were in Vietnam (1982), The Bloody Crossroads: Where Literature and Politics Meet (1986), Ex-Friends (1990), My Love Affair with America: The Cautionary Tale of a Cheerful Conservative (2000), The Prophets: Who They Were, What They Are (2002), and, most recently, The Norman Podhoretz Reader: A Selection of His Writings from the 1950s Through the 1990s (2004).