The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has announced that it will award four-term North Carolina governor and Elon Law advisory board member James B. Hunt, Jr. with the foundation's Frank E. Taplin, Jr. Public Intellectual Award.
The award, to be presented in October, recognizes individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to public cultural and intellectual life.
“Governor Hunt, who became known as the nation’s first ‘education governor’ during his four terms in office, is a national leader in improving policy and practice in early childhood education, strengthening K-12 standards, and ensuring that all students have access to excellent teachers,” the foundation said in its announcement.
Hunt has been a member of the Elon University School of Law Advisory Board since 2006. In 2008, he delivered the law school’s Joseph M. Bryan Distinguished Leadership Lecture, emphasizing education as the key to the nation’s long-term success. In the spring of 2010, he spoke at the announcement of Elon Law’s national moot court competition.
The first four-term governor in North Carolina history (1977-1985, 1993-2001), Hunt led efforts to improve the state’s schools, enhance the quality of teaching and provide programs for children to achieve early educational success. A nationally-renowned leader in the area of education, Hunt has devoted a significant portion of his career to the improvement of teaching in the nation’s schools. He served on the Carnegie Task Force, which created the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and has served on the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education. He founded and served as chairman of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future at Stanford University, and is chairman of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. He is now a partner in Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice PLLC.
Through the Taplin Award, created in 2004, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation celebrates the ways in which individuals connect intellectual and civic concerns. The award recognizes intellectual leaders from any field who have made a substantial contribution to public discourse and civic engagement. Prior winners of the award include Bill and Judith Davidson Moyers and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.