Obama Giving Stephen King the National Medal of Arts

Medal of Freedom

"The Presidential Medal of Liberty is not just our nation'south highest civilian honour—it'south a tribute to the idea that all of us, no matter where we come from, have the opportunity to alter this country for the better. From scientists, philanthropists, and public servants to activists, athletes, and artists, these 21 individuals have helped button America forrad, inspiring millions of people around the world along the mode."
— President Obama

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the Nation's highest noncombatant honor, presented to individuals who accept made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors. The awards will be presented at the White House on Nov 22nd.

2016 Recipients

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the National Basketball game Association's all-fourth dimension leading scorer who helped lead the Los Angeles Lakers to five championships and the Milwaukee Bucks to some other. During his career, Abdul-Jabbar was a six-time NBA Most Valuable Histrion and a 19-time NBA All-Star. Before joining the NBA, he was a star role player at UCLA, leading the Bruins to three consecutive championships. In addition to his legendary basketball career, Abdul-Jabbar has been an outspoken advocate for social justice.

Elouise Cobell (posthumous)

Elouise Cobell was a Blackfeet Tribal customs leader and an advocate for Native American self-conclusion and financial independence. She used her expertise in accounting to champion a lawsuit that resulted in a historic settlement, restoring tribal homelands to her beloved Blackfeet Nation and many other tribes, and in so doing, inspired a new generation of Native Americans to fight for the rights of others. Cobell helped constitute the Native American Banking company, served equally director of the Native American Community Development Corporation, and inspired Native American women to seek leadership roles in their communities.

Ellen DeGeneres

Ellen DeGeneres is an accolade-winning comedian who has hosted her popular daytime talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Bear witness, since 2003 with her trademarked humor, humility, and optimism. In 2003 Ellen lent her voice to a forgetful but unforgettable footling fish named Dory in Finding Nemo. She reprised her role again in 2016 with the hugely successful Finding Dory. Ellen besides hosted the Academy Awards twice, in 2007 and 2014. In 1997, after coming out herself, DeGeneres made Tv set history when her character on Ellen revealed she was a lesbian. In her piece of work and in her life, she has been a passionate advocate for equality and fairness.

Robert De Niro

Robert De Niro has brought to life some of the most memorable roles in American film during a career that spans five decades. His first major movie roles were in the sports drama Bang the Drum Slowly and Martin Scorsese's crime film Mean Streets. He is a seven-time Academy Award nominee and two-fourth dimension Oscar winner, and is also a Kennedy Centre honoree.

Richard Garwin

Richard Garwin is a polymath physicist who earned a Ph.D. nether Enrico Fermi at age 21 and later on made pioneering contributions to U.S. defense and intelligence technologies, depression-temperature and nuclear physics, detection of gravitational radiation, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computer systems, light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation printing, and nuclear arms command and nonproliferation. He directed Applied Research at IBM'due south Thomas J. Watson Inquiry Center and taught at the Academy of Chicago, Columbia University, and Harvard University. The author of 500 technical papers and a winner of the National Medal of Science, Garwin holds 47 U.S. patents, and has advised numerous administrations.

Bill and Melinda Gates

Bill and Melinda Gates established the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 to assistance all people atomic number 82 healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, the foundation focuses on improving people'due south health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, the mission is to ensure that all people—particularly those with the fewest resources—take access to the opportunities they demand to succeed in school and life. The Gates Foundation has provided more than $36 billion in grants since its inception.

Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry is one of the world's leading architects, whose works accept helped define contemporary architecture. His best-known buildings include the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Dancing House in Prague, and the Guggenheim Museum building in Bilbao, Spain.

Margaret H. Hamilton

Margaret H. Hamilton led the team that created the on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo command modules and lunar modules. A mathematician and figurer scientist who started her own software company, Hamilton contributed to concepts of asynchronous software, priority scheduling and priority displays, and human-in-the-loop decision capability, which set the foundation for modern, ultra-reliable software pattern and applied science.

Tom Hanks

Tom Hanks is one of the Nation's finest actors and filmmakers. He has been nominated for the Academy Honor for Best Actor in a Leading Office five times, and received the award for his piece of work in Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. Those roles and countless others, including in Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, and Bandage Away, have left an enduring mark on American film. Off screen, as an advocate, Hanks has advocated for social and ecology justice, and for our veterans and their families.

Grace Hopper (posthumous)

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, known as "Amazing Grace" and "the start lady of software," was at the forefront of computers and programming development from the 1940s through the 1980s. Hopper's work helped make coding languages more practical and accessible, and she created the first compiler, which translates source code from one linguistic communication into another. She taught mathematics every bit an associate professor at Vassar College before joining the United States Naval Reserve equally a lieutenant (inferior grade) during World War Two, where she became i of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer and began her lifelong leadership function in the field of computer science.

Michael Jordan

Michael Jordan is i of the greatest athletes of all fourth dimension. Hashemite kingdom of jordan played xv seasons in the NBA for the Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards; he is currently a primary owner and chairman of the Charlotte Hornets. During his career, he won six championships, 5 Most Valuable Player awards, and appeared in 14 All-Star games.

Maya Lin

Maya Lin is an artist and designer who is known for her work in sculpture and landscape fine art. She designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. and since and so has pursued a historic career in both art and architecture. A committed environmentalist, Lin is currently working on a multi-sited artwork/memorial, What is Missing? bringing awareness to the planet'south loss of habitat and biodiversity.

Lorne Michaels

Lorne Michaels is a producer and screenwriter, all-time known for creating and producing Sabbatum Night Live, which has run continuously for more than 40 years. In addition, Michaels has also produced The This night Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Tardily Night with Seth Meyers, and thirty Rock, amongst other popular, award-winning shows. He has won 13 Emmy Awards over the form of his lengthy career.

Newt Minow

Newt Minow is an chaser with a long and distinguished career in public life. Afterward serving in the U.South. Regular army during World War II, Minow served as a Supreme Courtroom clerk and counsel to the Governor of Illinois. In 1961, President Kennedy selected Minow, and so 34, to serve as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), where he helped shape the future of American television set and was a vigorous abet for broadcasting that promoted the public interest. In the five decades since leaving the FCC, Minow has maintained a prominent private police practise while devoting himself to numerous public and charitable causes.

Eduardo Padrón

Eduardo Padrón is the President of Miami Dade College (MDC), 1 of the largest institutions of higher education in the United States. During his more than than four decade career, President Padrón has been a national voice for admission and inclusion. He has worked to ensure all students accept admission to high quality, affordable instruction. He has championed innovative didactics and learning strategies making MDC a national model of excellence.

Robert Redford

Robert Redford is an actor, manager, producer, businessman, and environmentalist. In 1981, he founded the Sundance Found to advance the work of independent filmmakers and storytellers throughout the globe, including through its almanac Sundance Film Festival. He has received an Academy Award for Best Manager and for Lifetime Achievement. Redford has directed or starred in numerous movement pictures, including The Candidate, All the President's Men, Quiz Evidence, and A River Runs Through It.

Diana Ross

Diana Ross has had an iconic career spanning more than l years within the amusement industry in music, moving-picture show, television, theater, and style. Diana Ross is an Academy Honor nominee, inductee into the Rock & Curlicue Hall of Fame, and recipient of the Grammy Awards highest honor, the Lifetime Accomplishment Award. Ross was a recipient of the 2007 Kennedy Middle Honors. Diana Ross's greatest legacy is her five wonderful children.

Vin Scully

Vin Scully is a broadcaster who, for 67 seasons, was the vocalism of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers. In Southern California, where generations of fans have grown up listening to Dodger baseball, Scully's vox is known equally the "soundtrack to summer." In 1988, he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Scully's signature vox brought to life key moments in baseball history, including perfect games by Sandy Koufax and Don Larsen, Kirk Gibson's dwelling house run in the 1988 Globe Series, and Hank Aaron's record-breaking 715th dwelling run.

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen is a vocaliser, songwriter, and bandleader. More than than five decades agone, he bought a guitar and learned how to go far talk. Since then, the stories he has told, in lyrics and epic live concert performances, have helped shape American music and take challenged united states to realize the American dream. Springsteen is a Kennedy Centre honoree and he and the E Street Band he leads have each been inducted into the Stone and Roll Hall of Fame.

Cicely Tyson

Cicely Tyson has performed on the stage, on television, and on the silver screen. She has won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award, and is known for her performances in Sounder, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and The Help. In 2013, she returned to the stage with The Trip to the Bountiful, and was awarded the Tony Award for all-time leading actress. Tyson received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2015.

2015 Recipients

Yogi Berra

Yogi Berra spent over 40 years as a professional person baseball catcher, manager, and motorbus. Widely regarded as i of the greatest catchers in baseball history, Berra was an 18-fourth dimension All-Star and 10-time World Series Champion who was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972. Berra, a lifelong ambassador for inclusion in sports, put his professional person career on hold to bring together the Navy during Globe War Two, where he fought with Allied forces on D-Twenty-four hours and eventually earned a Imperial Heart.

Bonnie Carroll

Bonnie Carroll is a life-long public servant who has devoted her life to caring for our military and veterans. After her husband, Brigadier General Tom Carroll, died in an Regular army C-12 plane crash in 1992, Carroll founded the Tragedy Assist Program for Survivors (TAPS), which provides comprehensive support to those impacted by the death of their military machine hero, bringing healing comfort and compassionate care to the living legacies of our nation's service and sacrifice.

Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Chisholm made history in 1968 past condign the outset African-American woman elected to Congress, outset the first of seven terms in the House of Representatives. In 1969 she became ane of the founding members of what would become the Congressional Black Caucus. She also made history becoming the outset major-party African-American female person candidate to make a bid for the U.South. presidency. She was a champion of minority education and employment opportunities throughout her tenure in Congress.

Emilio Estefan

Emilio Estefan is a passionate and visionary music producer, entrepreneur, author, and songwriter who has won nineteen Grammy Awards and influenced a generation of artists. As the founding fellow member of the Miami Audio Machine, and later through a decades-long career producing and shaping the work of countless stars, Estefan has helped popularize Latin music effectually the earth. He has received a Lifetime Accomplishment Honour from the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Gloria Estefan

Gloria Estefan is a singer, songwriter, actor, and entrepreneur who introduced Latin music to a global audience. The Cuban-American lead vocalist of the Miami Sound Machine has had chart-topping hits such as "Conga," "Rhythm is Gonna Get Yous," and "Anything for You." Estefan has won seven Grammy Awards and is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than than 100 million records worldwide. Estefan became one of the first mainstream Hispanic artists to crossover between English and Spanish language music.

Baton Frank, Jr.

Billy Frank, Jr. was a tireless advocate for Indian treaty rights and environmental stewardship. His activism paved the way for the "Boldt decision," which reaffirmed tribal co-management of salmon resource in the state of Washington. Frank led constructive "fish-ins," modeled afterwards sit-ins of the civil rights motility, during the tribal "fish wars" of the 1960s and 1970s. His magnetic personality and tireless advocacy over more than than 50 years fabricated him a revered figure both domestically and abroad.

Lee Hamilton

Lee Hamilton has been one of the nigh influential voices on international relations and U.South. national security over the course of his career. From 1965 to 1999, he served Indiana in the U.S. Firm of Representatives, where his chairmanships included the Committee on Strange Affairs and the Permanent Select Commission on Intelligence. Since retiring from Congress, Hamilton has been involved in efforts to address some of our nation'south almost loftier profile homeland security and strange policy challenges.

Katherine Chiliad. Johnson

Katherine G. Johnson is a pioneer in American space history. A NASA mathematician, Johnson's computations have influenced every major space program from Mercury through the Shuttle program. Johnson was hired as a research mathematician at the Langley Inquiry Eye with the National Advisory Commission for Helmsmanship (NACA), the agency that preceded NASA, after they opened hiring to African-Americans and women.

Willie Mays

Willie Mays was a professional baseball player, spending most of his 22 seasons every bit a eye fielder for the New York and San Francisco Giants. Mays ended his career with 660 dwelling runs, making him the 5th all-fourth dimension record-holder. Known equally "The Say Hey Kid," Mays was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979 and landed on MLB'south All-Time squad. In 1951, Mays became one of the first African-American players in Major League Baseball history and won the Rookie of the Year award. Mays likewise served in the U.South. Army.

Barbara Mikulski

Sen. Mikulski is a lifelong public retainer who has held elected role since 1971. She became the longest serving female Senator in 2011, the longest serving woman in Congress in 2012, and the outset female person Senator to chair the Senate Appropriations Committee in 2012. Previously a social worker and community activist, she championed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Human action and helped establish the NIH Office of Research on Women's Health to include women in federally-funded health enquiry protocols.

Itzhak Perlman

Itzhak Perlman is a treasured conductor and sought-subsequently teacher. A native of Israel, he came to the Usa at a young age and fabricated his Carnegie Hall debut in 1963 when he was eighteen. In addition to performing internationally and recording the classical music for which he is best known, Mr. Perlman teaches talented young musicians through the Perlman Music Programme alongside his married woman Toby. Through his advocacy and his instance, he has been an important voice on behalf of persons with disabilities.

William Ruckelshaus

William D. Ruckelshaus is a dedicated public retainer who has worked tirelessly to protect public health and combat global challenges like climate change. As the beginning and fifth Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, he shaped the guiding principles of the agency. Amid the EPA's key early on achievements under his leadership was a nationwide ban on the pesticide DDT and an agreement with the automobile industry to crave catalytic converters, which significantly reduced automobile pollution.

Stephen Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim is one of the country's most influential theater composers and lyricists. His piece of work has helped define American theater with shows such every bit Company, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, and Into the Woods. Mr. Sondheim has won viii Grammy Awards, eight Tony Awards, an Academy Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg is an American film director, producer, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. A three-fourth dimension University Accolade winner, Spielberg is widely considered one of the most influential filmmakers in cinematic history. Spielberg is the co-founder of DreamWorks Studios every bit well as the founder of the USC Shoah Foundation, an arrangement dedicated to overcoming intolerance and bigotry through the utilise of visual history testimony.

Barbra Streisand

Barbra Streisand is one of our nation'southward most gifted talents. Her torso of work includes extraordinary singing, acting, directing, producing, songwriting, and she is i of the few performers to receive an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and a Tony. In 1984, she became the first woman to win a Gilded World for All-time Director. In 2009, she endowed the Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, which works to correct gender inequality in the research of heart illness.

James Taylor

As a recording and touring artist, James Taylor has touched people with his warm baritone voice and distinctive mode of guitar-playing for more forty years, while setting a precedent to which countless young musicians accept aspired. Over the grade of his celebrated songwriting and performing career, he has won multiple Grammy awards and has been inducted into both the Rock and Curl Hall of Fame and the prestigious Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Minoru Yasui

Minoru Yasui was a ceremonious and human rights leader known for his continuous defense of the ideals of commonwealth embodied in our Constitution. Yasui challenged the constitutionality of a war machine curfew order during Globe State of war II on the grounds of racial discrimination, and spent 9 months in solitary solitude during the subsequent legal battle. In 1943, the Supreme Court upheld the military curfew gild. Yasui spent the rest of his life appealing his wartime conviction.

2014 Recipients

Alvin Ailey

Ailey was a choreographer, dancer, and the founder of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Ailey's work was groundbreaking in its exploration of the African American experience and the enrichment of the modern dance tradition, including his beloved American masterpiece Revelations. The Ailey system, based in New York City, carries on his pioneering legacy with performances, training, educational, and community programs for people of all backgrounds.

Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende is a highly acclaimed writer of 21 books that take sold 65 million copies in 35 languages. She has been recognized with numerous awards internationally. She received the prestigious National Literary Laurels in Chile, her land of origin, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Messages.

Tom Brokaw

Tom Brokaw is ane of America's most trusted and respected journalists. Mr. Brokaw served as anchor of NBC Nightly News from 1982 to 2004. For decades, Mr. Brokaw has reached millions of Americans in living rooms across the country to provide depth and analysis to historic moments as they unfold, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the terrorist attacks of 9-xi. His reporting has been recognized by the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Accomplishment Award, xi Emmys, and two Peabody awards.

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were civil rights activists and participants in "Freedom Summertime," an historic voter registration drive in 1964. As African Americans were systematically being blocked from voter rolls, Mr. Chaney, Mr. Goodman, and Mr. Schwerner joined hundreds of others working to register blackness voters in Mississippi. They were murdered at the outset of Freedom Summer. Their their efforts helped to inspire many of the landmark civil rights advancements that followed.

Mildred Dresselhaus

Mildred Dresselhaus is one of the most prominent physicists, materials scientists, and electric engineers of her generation. A professor of physics and electrical engineering at MIT, she is best known for deepening our understanding of condensed matter systems and the atomic backdrop of carbon, which has contributed to major advances in electronics and materials research.

John Dingell

John Dingell is a lifelong public servant, the longest serving Member of Congress in American history, and one of the virtually influential legislators in history. Mr. Dingell has fought for landmark pieces of legislation over the past vi decades, from civil rights legislation in the 1960s, to legislation protecting our environment in the 1970s, to his persistent fight for health care, from Medicare to the Affordable Intendance Human activity. Mr. Dingell also served in the U.S. Regular army during World State of war II.

Ethel Kennedy

Ethel Kennedy has dedicated her life to advancing the cause of social justice, human rights, environmental protection, and poverty reduction by creating endless ripples of hope to effect modify effectually the world. Over 45 years agone, she founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, which is dedicated to realizing her husband'due south dream of a more than just and peaceful world.

Suzan Harjo

Suzan Harjo is a writer, curator, and activist who has advocated for improving the lives of Native peoples throughout her career. As a member of the Carter Administration and every bit current president of the Morning Star Plant, she has been a key effigy in many important Indian legislative battles, including the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Dr. Harjo is Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, and a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.

Abner Mikva

Abner Mikva is a dedicated public servant who has served with distinction in all three branches of government. He was a v-term Congressman from Illinois, Chief Gauge of the United States Courtroom of Appeals for the D.C. Excursion and White House Counsel for President Pecker Clinton. He has also served as a law professor at Northwestern University, the Academy of Chicago, and the University of Illinois.

Patsy Takemoto Mink (posthumous)

Patsy Takemoto Mink was a Congresswoman from Hawai'i, serving a full of 12 terms. She was born and raised on Maui, became the offset Japanese American female attorney in Hawai'i, and served in the Hawai'i territorial and state legislatures beginning in 1956. In 1964, she became the commencement woman of colour elected to Congress. She is best known for co-authoring and championing Title IX of the Instruction Amendments of 1972.

Edward Roybal (posthumous)

Edward R. Roybal was the first Mexican-American to exist elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from California in almost a century. In 1976, he founded the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the National Clan of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, creating a national forum for Latino problems and opening doors for a new generation of Latino leaders.

Charles Sifford

Charles Sifford was a professional golfer who helped to desegregate the Professional Golfers' Clan, despite harassment and death threats. He started his life on the links as a caddy and was formally excluded from the PGA for much of his career because of the color of his skin. In 1960, he won his challenge over the PGA's "Caucasian just" membership policy and went on to win official PGA events and the PGA Seniors' Championship. He was inducted in the Earth Golf game Hall of Fame in 2004.

Robert Solow

Robert Solow is 1 of the most widely respected economists of the past sixty years. His enquiry in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s transformed the field, laying the background for much of modernistic economics. He continues to influence policy makers, demonstrating how smart investments, especially in new technology, can build broad-based prosperity, and he continues to actively participate in contemporary debates about inequality and economical growth. He won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economical Sciences in 1987.

Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep is 1 of the nearly widely known and acclaimed actors in history. Ms. Streep has captured our imaginations with her unparalleled ability to portray a wide range of roles and attract an audience that has only grown over time, portraying characters who embody the total range of the human being experience. She holds the record for virtually Academy Laurels nominations of whatsoever actor in history.

Marlo Thomas

Marlo Thomas is an award-winning actress, producer, best-selling author and social activist. Whether championing equality for girls and women, giving vocalism to the less fortunate, breaking barriers by portraying one of television's kickoff single working women on That Girl, or pedagogy children to be "Gratis to Exist Yous and Me," Thomas inspires us all to dream bigger and reach higher. Thomas serves as National Outreach Managing director for St. Jude Children's Enquiry Hospital.

Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder is one of the world's most gifted singer-songwriters. Mr. Wonder has created a sound entirely his own, mixing rhythm and dejection with genres ranging from rock and coil to reggae, and demonstrating his mastery of a range of instruments, styles, and themes. He is too a Kennedy Centre Honoree, a member of the Stone and Whorl Hall of Fame, and winner of 25 Grammys and an Academy Award.

2013 Recipients

Ernie Banks

Known to many as "Mr. Cub," Ernie Banks is ane of the greatest baseball players of all time. During his nineteen seasons with the Chicago Cubs, he played in 11 All-Star Games, hit over 500 dwelling runs, and became the first National League player to win Near Valuable Player honors in back-to-back years. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1977, his first twelvemonth of eligibility.

Ben Bradlee

Ben Bradlee is one of the almost respected newsmen of his generation. During his tenure as executive editor of The Washington Post, Mr. Bradlee oversaw coverage of the Watergate scandal, successfully challenged the Federal Government over the right to publish the Pentagon Papers, and guided the newspaper through some of its about challenging moments. He also served in the Navy during Globe War II.

Bill Clinton

President Clinton was the 42nd President of the U.s.a.. Before taking office, he served as Governor and Chaser Full general of the State of Arkansas. Following his second term, President Clinton established the Clinton Foundation to ameliorate global health, strengthen economies, promote health and health, and protect the surroundings. He also formed the Clinton-Bush-league Republic of haiti Fund with President George W. Bush in 2010.

Daniel Inouye

Daniel Inouye was a lifelong public servant. Equally a fellow, he fought in World War II with the 442nd Regimental Gainsay Team, for which he received the Medal of Accolade. He was later elected to the Hawaii Territorial House of Representatives, the U.s. House of Representatives, and the U.s.a. Senate. Senator Inouye was the first Japanese American to serve in Congress, representing the people of Hawaii from the moment they joined the Union.

Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman is a pioneering scholar of psychology. After escaping Nazi occupation in Globe State of war 2, Dr. Kahneman immigrated to State of israel, where he served in the State of israel Defense Forces and trained as a psychologist. Alongside Amos Tversky, he practical cognitive psychology to economic analysis, laying the foundation for a new field of research and earning the Nobel Prize in Economic science in 2002. He is currently a professor at Princeton Academy.

Richard Lugar

Richard Lugar represented Indiana in the United States Senate for more than 30 years. An internationally respected statesman, he is best known for his bipartisan leadership and decades-long delivery to reducing the threat of nuclear weapons. Prior to serving in Congress, Senator Lugar was a Rhodes Scholar and Mayor of Indianapolis from 1968 to 1975. He currently serves as President of the Lugar Center.

Loretta Lynn

Loretta Lynn is a country music legend. Raised in rural Kentucky, she emerged every bit i of the offset successful female person land music vocalists in the early 1960s, courageously breaking barriers in an industry long dominated by men. Ms. Lynn'southward numerous accolades include the Kennedy Middle Honors in 2003 and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Laurels in 2010.

Mario Molina

Mario Molina is a visionary chemist and ecology scientist. Built-in in United mexican states, Dr. Molina came to America to pursue his graduate degree. He later earned the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering how chlorofluorocarbons deplete the ozone layer. Dr. Molina is a professor at the Academy of California, San Diego; Director of the Mario Molina Center for Energy and Environment; and a fellow member of the President'due south Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Sally Ride

Sally Ride was the first American female person astronaut to travel to space. As a role model to generations of young women, she advocated passionately for science education, stood upward for racial and gender equality in the classroom, and taught students from every background that there are no limits to what they can reach. Dr. Ride also served in several administrations as an advisor on space exploration.

Bayard Rustin

Bayard Rustin was an unyielding activist for civil rights, dignity, and equality for all. An advisor to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he promoted nonviolent resistance, participated in one of the kickoff Freedom Rides, organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Liberty, and fought tirelessly for marginalized communities at habitation and abroad. As an openly gay African American, Mr. Rustin stood at the intersection of several of the fights for equal rights.

Arturo Sandoval

Arturo Sandoval is a celebrated jazz trumpeter, pianist, and composer. Born outside Havana, he became a protégé of jazz legend Giddy Gillespie and gained international acclaim as a dynamic performer. He defected to the United States in 1990 and subsequently became an American citizen. He has been awarded nine Grammy Awards and is widely considered one of the greatest living jazz artists.

Dean Smith

Dean Smith was caput coach of the University of North Carolina basketball game team from 1961 to 1997. In those 36 years, he earned 2 national championships, was named National Bus of the Year multiple times, and retired as the winningest men'southward college basketball coach in history. 90-six percent of his players graduated from higher. Mr. Smith has also remained a defended civil rights advocate throughout his career.

Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem is a renowned writer and activist for women's equality. She was a leader in the women's liberation movement, co-founded Ms. mag, and helped launch a wide variety of groups and publications defended to advancing civil rights. Ms. Steinem has received dozens of awards over the course of her career, and remains an active voice for women's rights.

C.T. Vivian

C.T. Vivian is a distinguished minister, author, and organizer. A leader in the Civil Rights Motility and friend to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther Rex, Jr., he participated in Freedom Rides and sit-ins across our country. Dr. Vivian also helped institute numerous civil rights organizations, including Vision, the National Anti-Klan Network, and the Middle for Democratic Renewal. In 2012, he returned to serve equally interim President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Patricia Wald

Patricia Wald is one of the most respected appellate judges of her generation. After graduating equally 1 of only 11 women in her Yale Academy Law School class, she became the beginning woman appointed to the U.s.a. Circuit Courtroom of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and served every bit Chief Judge from 1986-1991. She later served on the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. Ms. Wald currently serves on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey is one of the world's almost successful broadcast journalists. She is all-time known for creating The Oprah Winfrey Testify, which became the highest rated talk show in America for 25 years. Ms. Winfrey has long been active in philanthropic causes and expanding opportunities for young women. She has received numerous awards throughout her career, including the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award in 2002 and the Kennedy Heart Honors in 2010.

2012 Recipients

Madeleine Albright

From 1997 to 2001, Albright served as the 64th United States Secretary of Land, the kickoff adult female to hold that position. During her tenure, she worked to enlarge NATO and helped lead its campaign confronting terror and indigenous cleansing in the Balkans, pursued peace in the Middle East and Africa, sought to reduce the dangerous spread of nuclear weapons, and was a champion of democracy, homo rights, and good governance across the earth. From 1993 to 1997, she was America'due south Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

John Doar

Doar was a legendary public retainer and leader of federal efforts to protect and enforce civil rights during the 1960s. He served as Banana Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights Partition of the Section of Justice. He was instrumental during many major civil rights crises, including preventing a riot in Jackson, Mississippi following the funeral of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evars in 1963. Doar also led the effort to enforce the right to vote and implement the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is one of the most influential American musicians of the 20th century. Releasing his first anthology in 1962, his work influenced the civil rights movement of the 1960s and has had significant impact on American civilisation over the past 5 decades. He has won 11 Grammys, including a lifetime accomplishment laurels. He has written more than 600 songs, and his songs take been recorded more than 3,000 times by other artists.

William Foege

A physician and epidemiologist, Foege helped lead the successful entrada to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. He was appointed Managing director of the Centers for Illness Control and Prevention in 1977 and, with colleagues, founded the Task Strength for Child Survival in 1984. Foege's leadership has contributed significantly to increased awareness and activity on global wellness bug, and his enthusiasm, energy, and effectiveness in these endeavors accept inspired a generation of leaders in public health.

John Glenn

Glenn is a old U.s.a. Marine Corps pilot, astronaut, and The states Senator. In 1962, he was the third American in infinite and the start American to orbit the Earth. Afterwards retiring from the Marine Corps, Glenn was elected to the U.S. Senate in Ohio in 1974. He was an architect and sponsor of the 1978 Nonproliferation Act and served as Chairman of the Senate Authorities Affairs committee from 1987 until 1995. In 1998, Glenn became the oldest person to visit space at the age of 77.

Gordon Hirabayashi

Hirabayashi openly defied the forced relocation and internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Every bit an undergraduate at the University of Washington, he refused the order to report for evacuation to an internment army camp, instead turning himself in to the FBI to assert his conventionalities that these practices were racially discriminatory. Consequently, he was convicted by a U.S. Federal Commune Court in Seattle of defying the exclusion order and violating curfew.

Dolores Huerta

Huerta is a ceremonious rights, workers, and women's advocate. With Cesar Chavez, she co-founded the National Farmworkers Clan in 1962, which subsequently became the United Farm Workers of America. Huerta has served equally a customs activist and a political organizer, and was influential in securing the passage of California's Agronomical Labor Relations Act of 1975, and disability insurance for farmworkers in California.

January Karski

Karski served as an officer in the Polish Surreptitious during World State of war II and carried among the outset eye-witness accounts of the Holocaust to the world. He worked as a courier, entering the Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi Izbica transit camp, where he saw first-mitt the atrocities occurring under Nazi occupation. Karski later traveled to London to see with the Polish authorities-in-exile and with British government officials. He subsequently traveled to the The states and met with President Roosevelt.

Juliette Gordon Depression

Low founded the Girl Scouts in 1912. The organization strives to teach girls cocky-reliance and resourcefulness. It also encourages girls to seek fulfillment in the professional person world and to get active citizens in their communities. Since 1912, the Girl Scouts has grown into the largest educational organization for girls and has had over l one thousand thousand members.

Toni Morrison

One of our nation'due south about celebrated novelists, Morrison is renowned for works such as Vocal of Solomon, Jazz, and Beloved, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988. When she became the start African American woman to win a Nobel Prize in 1993, Morrison'south citation captured her as an author "who in novels characterized past visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential attribute of American reality."

Shimon Peres

An ardent advocate for Israel's security and for peace, Peres was elected the 9th President of Israel in 2007. Start elected to the Knesset in 1959, he has served in a variety of positions throughout the Israeli regime, including every bit Prime number Minister from 1984-1986 and 1995-1996. Along with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and then-PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, Peres won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for his work as Foreign Minister during the Centre East peace talks that led to the Oslo Accords.

John Paul Stevens

Stevens served as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1975 to 2010, when he retired equally the third longest-serving Justice in the Court's history. Known for his independent, pragmatic and rigorous approach to judging, Justice Stevens and his work accept left a lasting banner on the law in areas such equally civil rights, the Showtime Amendment, the death sentence, administrative law, and the separation of powers.

Pat Summitt

In add-on to accomplishing an outstanding career as the all-fourth dimension winningest leader amongst all NCAA basketball coaches, Summitt has taken the University of Tennessee to more Final Four appearances than any other coach and has the second best record of NCAA Championships in basketball game. Off the court, she has been a spokesperson against Alzheimer's.

2011 Recipients

Robert M. Gates

Dr. Robert M. Gates served as U.Due south. Secretary of Defense from December 2006 to July 2011. Dr. Gates was the only Secretary of Defense in U.S. history to be asked to remain in that office by a newly elected President. President Barack Obama was the 8th president Dr. Gates served. In 1967 he was deputed a 2d lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force and served as an intelligence officer at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.

2010 Recipients

President George H. W. Bush

George Herbert Walker Bush-league was the 41st President of the The states. Prior to that, he was Vice President in the Reagan Administration, Director of Central Intelligence, Chief of the U.S. Liaison's Role to the People'south Republic of Communist china, U.S. Administrator to the United nations. He served in the Navy during World War II. President Bush and President Clinton worked together to encourage aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Indian Body of water tsunami in 2004.

Chancellor Angela Merkel

Merkel is the Chancellor of the Federal Democracy of Germany. She is the get-go woman and starting time East German to serve every bit Chancellor of a unified Germany. Her political career began when she joined the new Democratic Awakening political party in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1990, equally Westward and East Germany merged into ane reunited country, her party joined with the Christian Autonomous Union, and she was elected to the High german parliament.

Congressman John Lewis

Lewis is an American hero and a giant of the civil rights movement. He served equally chairman of the Educatee Irenic Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington. In May 1961, he participated in the initial Freedom Ride, during which he endured violent attacks in Stone Hill, Southward Carolina, and Montgomery, Alabama. Since 1987, John Lewis has continued his service to the nation equally the U.S. Representative for Georgia's 5th District.

John H. Adams

John H. Adams co-founded the Natural Resource Defense Council in 1970. Adams served every bit Executive Managing director and, subsequently, as president of the nonprofit ecology advancement group until 2006. His tenure is unparalleled by the leader of any other ecology organization.

Maya Angelou

Dr. Maya Angelou is a prominent and celebrated author, poet, educator, producer, actress, filmmaker, and civil rights activist, who is currently the Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University. She has served on two presidential committees, was awarded the Presidential Medal for the Arts in 2000 and the Lincoln Medal in 2008.

Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett is an American investor, industrialist, and philanthropist. He is ane of the nigh successful investors in the earth. Oftentimes called the "legendary investor Warren Buffett," he is the primary shareholder, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is a co-founder of The Giving Pledge, an organization that encourages wealthy Americans to devote at least 50 percent of their net worth to philanthropy.

Jasper Johns

American artist Jasper Johns has produced a distinguished body of work dealing with themes of perception and identity since the mid-1950s. Among his best known works are depictions of familiar objects and signs, including flags, targets and numbers. He has incorporated innovative approaches to materials and techniques, and his work has influenced pop, minimal, and conceptual art.

Gerda Weissmann Klein

Weissmann Klein is a Jewish Holocaust survivor who has written several books almost her experiences. Afterward Nazi Frg took over her homeland of Poland, Klein was separated from both her parents: they were sent to Auschwitz and she to a series of labor and concentration camps. In 1945, she was sent on a forced 350-mile death march to avoid the advance of Allied forces. She was one of the minority who survived the forced journey.

Dr. Tom Little (Posthumous)

Dr. Little was an optometrist who was brutally murdered on Baronial half-dozen, 2010, by the Taliban in the Kuran Wa Munjan district of Badakhshan, Afghanistan, along with nine other members of a squad returning from a humanitarian mission to provide vision intendance in the remote Parun valley of Nuristan. Dr. Picayune and his wife, Libby, lived and worked in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan for three decades, providing vision, dental and mother/child care to Afghans.

Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma is considered the globe's greatest living cellist, recognized equally a prodigy since the historic period of v whose glory transcends the globe of classical music. Born in Paris, Ma made his Carnegie Hall debut at age nine. He was the recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize in 1978, and, in 1991, Harvard awarded him an honorary doctorate in music. He serves equally Artistic Director of the Silk Road Project, and has won sixteen Grammy awards.

Sylvia Mendez

Sylvia Mendez is a ceremonious rights activist of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent. As an 8-twelvemonth-former, her parents attempted to enroll Mendez in an all-white school in their community, but were denied entry at and were told to go to the school for Mexican children. Her father and other parents sued and prevailed. The Mendez v. Westminster case was a landmark determination in the civil rights movement against segregation.

Stan Musial

Stan "The Man" Musial is a baseball game legend and Hall of Fame first baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals. Musial played 22 seasons for the Cardinals from 1941 to 1963. A 24-time All-Star selection, Musial accumulated 3,630 hits and 475 dwelling runs during his career, was named the National League's Most Valuable Role player three times, and was a member of three World Series championship teams. Musial likewise served as the Cardinals' general manager in 1967, when the squad once again won the World Series.

Beak Russell

Russell is the former Boston Celtics' Captain who nigh single-handedly redefined the game of basketball. Russell led the Celtics to a near unparalleled string of eleven championships in thirteen years and was named the NBA's Near Valuable Histrion 5 times. The kickoff African American to coach in the NBA, Bill Russell is also an impassioned advocate of human being rights. He marched with Dr. Martin Luther Male monarch, Jr., and has been a consequent advocate of equality.

Jean Kennedy Smith

In 1974, Jean Kennedy Smith founded VSA, a non-profit system affiliated with the John F. Kennedy Heart that promotes the artistic talents of children, youth and adults with disabilities. From 1993 to 1998, Smith served as U. S. Ambassador to Ireland, and played a pivotal role in the peace process. Smith is the youngest daughter of Joseph and Rose Kennedy and is the Secretarial assistant of the Lath of Trustees of the Kennedy Center.

John J. Sweeney

John J. Sweeney is the current President Emeritus of the AFL-CIO, and served as President of the AFL-CIO from 1995 to 2009. The son of Irish gaelic immigrants, a domestic worker and a bus commuter in the Bronx, he worked his way up in the labor movement to become President of the Service Employees International Marriage, growing the union to serve as a strong vox for working people. As President of the AFL-CIO, he revitalized the American labor movement, emphasizing wedlock organizing and social justice, and was a powerful advocate for America'southward workers.

2009 Recipients

Nancy Goodman Brinker

Goodman Brinker is the founder of Susan G. Komen, the globe's leading breast cancer organization. Brinker established the organization in memory of her sister, who passed away from chest cancer. Through events like Race for the Cure, the organization has given and invested over $1.three billion for research, health services and teaching services since its founding in 1982 and developed a worldwide grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists working together to ensure quality intendance for all.

Pedro José Greer, Jr.

Dr. Pedro Jose Greer is a physician and the Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs at the Florida International University School of Medicine. Dr. Greer is the founder of Camillus Health Concern, an bureau that provides medical intendance to over x,000 homeless patients a year in the city of Miami. He is too the founder and medical director of the St. John Bosco Clinic which provides basic master medical care to disadvantaged children and adults in the Little Havana community.

Stephen Hawking

Hawking is an internationally-recognized theoretical physicist who has a severe physical disability due to motor neuron disease. He is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, a postal service previously held by Isaac Newton in 1669. In add-on to his pioneering bookish research in mathematics and physics, Hawking has penned three popular science books, including the bestselling A Cursory History of Time.

Jack Kemp

Jack Kemp, who passed away in May 2009, served as a U.Due south. Congressman, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Republican nominee for Vice President. Prior to inbound public service, Kemp was a professional football player (1957 – 1969) and led the Buffalo Bills to American Football game League championships in 1964 and 1965. In Congress and as a Chiffonier Secretarial assistant, Kemp was a self-described "bleeding centre conservative" who worked to encourage development in underserved urban communities.

Sen. Edward Kennedy

Senator Kennedy served in the United States Senate for forty-half-dozen years and was been i of the greatest lawmakers of our time. From reforming our public schools to strengthening civil rights laws and supporting working Americans, Senator Kennedy has defended his career to fighting for equal opportunity, fairness and justice for all Americans. He called health intendance reform the "cause of his life," and championed nearly every wellness care pecker enacted by Congress over the grade of the last five decades.

Billie Jean King

King was an acclaimed professional tennis player in the 1960s and 1970s, and has helped champion gender equality issues non only in sports, but in all areas of public life. King beat Bobby Riggs in the "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match, then the most viewed lawn tennis match in history. King became 1 of the starting time openly lesbian major sports figures in America when she came out in 1981. King became the first woman commissioner in professional sports when she co-founded the World Squad Lawn tennis League.

Rev. Joseph Lowery

Rev. Lowery has been a leader in the U.South. ceremonious rights movement since the early 1950s. He headed the Alabama Civic Affairs Association, the organization which led the Motility to desegregate buses and public accommodations. Rev. Lowery later co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a leading ceremonious rights system, with Dr. Martin Luther King, and was chosen by Dr. King to Chair the Delegation delivering the demands of the Selma-to-Montgomery March to Alabama Governor George Wallace.

Joe Medicine Crow – High Bird

Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow, the last living Plains Indian war main, is the author of seminal works in Native American history and culture. He is the last person alive to have received direct oral testimony from a participant in the Battle of the Piffling Bighorn: his grandfather was a spotter for General George Armstrong Custer. A veteran of Globe War 2, Medicine Crow was the beginning member of his tribe to attend college, receiving his master's degree in anthropology in 1939.

Harvey Milk

Milk became the first openly gay elected official from a major metropolis in the United States when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Milk encouraged lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) citizens to live their lives openly and then they could modify gild and achieve social equality. Milk was shot and killed in 1978. Milk is revered nationally and globally as a pioneer of the LGBT ceremonious rights movement for his exceptional leadership and dedication to equal rights.

Sandra Day O'Connor

Justice O'Connor was the first adult female e'er to sit down on the The states Supreme Court. Nominated by President Reagan in 1981, she served until her retirement in 2006. Prior to joining the Supreme Court, she served as a fellow member of the Arizona land senate, where she became the start woman in the land to pb a state senate every bit Senate Bulk Leader. At a time when women rarely entered the legal profession, O'Connor graduated Stanford Constabulary School third in her class and served on the Stanford Law Review.

Sidney Poitier

Poitier was the commencement African American to be nominated and win a All-time Thespian Academy Award, receive an award at a peak international film festival (Venice Moving picture Festival), and be the top grossing moving-picture show star in the United States. Poitier starred in the get-go mainstream movies portraying "acceptable" interracial marriages and interracial kissing. Poitier began his acting career without whatsoever grooming or experience by auditioning at the American Negro Theatre.

Chita Rivera

Rivera is an accomplished and versatile actress, singer, and dancer, who has won Two Tony Awards and received seven nominations while breaking barriers and inspiring a generation of women to follow in her footsteps. In 2002, she became the first Hispanic recipient of the Kennedy Centre Honor. Propelled to stardom by her performance equally Anita in the original Broadway premiere of Westward Side Story, Rivera went on to star in additional landmark musicals such as Chicago, Goodbye Good day Birdie, and Jerry's Girls.

Mary Robinson

Mary Robinson was the first female person President of Ireland and a former United Nations Loftier Commissioner for Man Rights. Robinson served as a prominent member of the Irish gaelic Senate prior to her election as President. Since 2002 she has been President of Realizing Rights: The Upstanding Globalization Initiative, based in New York, which is an system she founded to make human rights the compass which charts a form for globalization that is off-white, just and benefits all.

Janet Davison Rowley

Janet Davison Rowley, M.D., is an American human geneticist and the first scientist to place a chromosomal translocation as the cause of leukemia and other cancers. Rowley is internationally renowned for her studies of chromosome abnormalities in human leukemia and lymphoma, which have led to dramatically improved survival rates for previously incurable cancers and the development of targeted therapies.

Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu is an Anglican Archbishop emeritus who was a leading anti-apartheid activist in South Africa. Widely regarded every bit "Southward Africa's moral conscience," he served every bit the General Secretary of the S African Council of Churches from 1978 – 1985, where he led a formidable crusade in back up of justice and racial reconciliation in South Africa. He received a Nobel Peace Prize for his work through SACC in 1984.

Muhammad Yunus

Dr. Muhammad Yunus is a global leader in anti-poverty efforts and has pioneered the utilize of "micro-loans" to provide credit to poor individuals without collateral. Dr. Yunus, an economist past grooming, founded the Grameen Bank in 1983 in his native Bangladesh to provide small, low-interest loans to the poor to help better their livelihood and communities. Dr. Yunus received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work.

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Source: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/campaign/medal-of-freedom