Alumni Day: Woodrow Wilson Award Recipient

National Endowment for the Humanities Chair Jim Leach, a longtime former U.S. congressman, was given the Woodrow Wilson Award, the highest honor for undergraduate alumni. Leach, who earned his A.B. in politics with honors from Princeton in 1964, began a four-year term in August as chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent grant-making agency of the U.S. government dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation and public programs in the humanities. In his 15 terms as a Republican congressman representing Iowa, Leach was known for his efforts to reach across partisan lines in policymaking. During his Alumni Day address, he expressed frustration with today's rancorous political discourse and called for a return to civility.