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event • Radcliffe Day

Radcliffe Day 2017

  • Friday, May 26, 2017
    10:30 AM ET
  • Radcliffe Yard
    10 Garden Street
    Cambridge, MA 02138
Judy Woodruffat Radcliffe Day 2017.
Photo by Tony Rinaldo

On Radcliffe Day, we celebrate our past, present, and future with hundreds of people in Radcliffe Yard and countless more online—drawn together by a shared dedication to ideas at work in the world. On Friday, May 26, 2017, we will honor the excellence, integrity, and impact of Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff with Radcliffe medals, and we will recognize the importance of great journalism.

The Radcliffe Day lunch at 12:50 p.m. will feature Walter Isaacson ’74, the author and president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, in conversation with Judy Woodruff about her groundbreaking achievements and partnership with her co-honoree. The journalist and author Michele Norris will accept the Radcliffe Medal on behalf of her close friend Gwen Ifill.

Radcliffe Day is both a celebration and an opportunity for intellectual exploration.

Join us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RadInstitute
#radday17

Program

The day begins at 10:30 a.m. with comments from David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, and then a morning panel, “(Un)Truths and Their Consequences,” moderated by Ann Marie Lipinski, the curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism before serving on the Pulitzer Prize board. The discussion will feature the following panelists:

  • Danielle Allen PhD ’01, James Bryant Conant University Professor and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University
  • A’Lelia Bundles ’74, author and former television executive and producer at NBC News and ABC News
  • E. J. Dionne ’73, columnist for the Washington Post, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, and commentator for ABC, MSNBC, and NPR
  • Jonah Goldberg, senior editor at National Review, a nationally syndicated columnist, a contributor to Fox News, and a fellow of the National Review Institute

Radcliffe Day brings together alumnae/i of Radcliffe and Harvard, Radcliffe Institute fellows and faculty, friends of the Institute, members of the broader Harvard community, and a public audience to honor excellence and inquiry.

10:30 AM
Comments by David Brooks and panel discussion: “(Un)Truths and Their Consequences”

12:50 PM
Lunch with conversation by Walter Isaacson and Judy Woodruff, and presentation of Radcliffe Medals, with Michele Norris accepting on behalf of Gwen Ifill

Gwen Ifill

Gwen Ifill (1955–2016) was the moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and co-anchor and managing editor for the PBS NewsHour with Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff.

She covered eight Presidential campaigns and wrote the bestseller The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, (Doubleday, 2009).

Washington Week is the longest-running prime-time news and public affairs program on television. Each week, Ifill brought together some of the best journalists in Washington to discuss the major stories of the week with the reporters who actually cover the news that emanates from the nation's capital and affects the nation and the world.

Before coming to PBS in 1999, she was chief congressional and political correspondent for NBC News, White House correspondent for the New York Times, and a local and national political reporter for the Washington Post. She also reported for the Baltimore Evening Sun and the Boston Herald American.

A native of New York City and a graduate of Simmons College in Boston, Ifill received more than 25 honorary doctorates. In 2015 she was awarded the National Press Club's highest honor, the Fourth Estate Award. She was also honored for her work by the Radio and Television News Directors Association, Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center, The National Association of Black Journalists, and Ohio University. She served on the board of the News Literacy Project and the advisory board of the Committee to Protect Journalists and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Judy Woodruff

Broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff is the co-anchor and managing editor of the PBS NewsHour. She has covered politics and other news for more than three decades at CNN, NBC, and PBS.

For 12 years, Woodruff served as anchor and senior correspondent for CNN, where her duties included anchoring the weekday program, Inside Politics. At PBS from 1983 to 1993, she was the chief Washington correspondent for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. From 1984 to 1990, she also anchored PBS' award-winning weekly documentary series, Frontline with Judy Woodruff. At NBC News, Woodruff was White House correspondent from 1977 to 1982.

Woodruff is a founding co-chair of the International Women's Media Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting and encouraging women in communication industries worldwide. She serves on the boards of trustee of the Freedom Forum, the Newseum, the Duke Endowment, and the Urban Institute. Woodruff is a graduate of Duke University, where she is a trustee emerita.

She is the recent recipient of the Cine Lifetime Achievement award, a Duke Distinguished Alumni award, a fellowship at Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center, the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award in Broadcast Journalism/Television, and the University of Southern California Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, among others.

Danielle Allen

Danielle Allen PhD ’01 is the James Bryant Conant University Professor and the director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard. She is a political theorist known for her work on justice and citizenship and a contributing columnist to the Washington Post. 

David Brooks

David Brooks is a New York Times columnist, an author, and a commentator for the PBS NewsHour. He previously worked as a reporter and op-ed editor for the Wall Street Journal, a senior editor at the Weekly Standard, and a contributing editor at Newsweek and the Atlantic.

A’Lelia Bundles

A’Lelia Bundles ’74 is an author who was a television executive and producer for 30 years at NBC News and ABC News, where she was the Washington, DC, deputy bureau chief. She serves on the Schlesinger Library Council at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. 

E. J. Dionne

E. J. Dionne ’73 is a columnist for the Washington Post, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, and a frequent commentator on politics for ABC, MSNBC, and NPR.

Jonah Goldberg 

Jonah Goldberg is a senior editor at National Review, a nationally syndicated columnist, a contributor to Fox News, and a fellow of the National Review Institute. He is also the New York Times best-selling author of Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (Sentinel, 2012) and Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (Doubleday, 2008).

Walter Isaacson

Walter Isaacson ’74 is the president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies institute. He is the author of many books, including biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Henry Kissinger. He has been the chairman and CEO of CNN and the editor of Time Magazine

Ann Marie Lipinski

Ann Marie Lipinski is the curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. She received the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting and has in the past served as editor in chief of the Chicago Tribune and cochair of the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Michele Norris

Michele Norris is a Peabody Award–winning journalist, executive director of the Race Card Project at the Aspen Institute, and author of a family memoir, The Grace of Silence (Pantheon Books, 2010). Norris was a host of NPR’s All Things Considered for more than a decade, and previously, she was a newspaper and television reporter.

Event Videos

(Un)Truths and Their Consequences

Judy Woodruff having a conversation at Radcliffe Day 2017.

A Conversation with Judy Woodruff

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