The Breukelein Institute in New York has named Hoover distinguished visiting fellow Diane Ravitch a recipient of its 2005 Gaudium Award.
The awards are given annually to four men and women whose lives have “illumined the horizon of human experience” through their extraordinary vocations in the arts and public service. The awards will be presented on November 7 in New York City.
The word gaudium is Latin for joy, which is what, the foundation notes, the recipients have shared with the work they do.
Diane Ravitch is a member of the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force and research professor of education at New York University. Ravitch also holds the Brown Chair in Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. From 1991 to 1993 she was assistant secretary of education in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. Among the eight books she has authored, her most recent titles include The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (2003) and Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform (2000).
Also receiving the award this year are American Baptist minister the Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard University; Robert Osborne, host of Turner Classic Movies since its inception, official historian of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and former president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association; stage and screen actress Jane Powell, who set house records for her touring stage performances in classic musicals and comedies and was featured singing again in Stephen Sondheim’s most recent musical, Bounce.
Other recipients of the award, established in 1982, include author, historian, and jazz musician Dave Brubeck; author and historian Thomas Cahill; Notre Dame University president Rev. Theodore Hesburgh; choreographer Agnes de Mille; novelist Alice McDermott; producer Joseph Papp; author Walker Percy; Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer; and performer Margaret Whiting.
The Breukelein Institute is a not-for profit, nonreligious entity established by the members of the Pontifical Congregation of St. Philip Neri in Brooklyn, New York, to raise money and originate programs and activities to affirm, improve, and reform the quality of life in the city of New York, particularly in Kings County.
