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Ex-NEA head to receive Notre Dame's Laetare Medal

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  • Originally published March 15, 2010 at 6:31 a.m., updated March 15, 2010 at 11:34 a.m.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — The University of Notre Dame will give its top award to a former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, a year after an anti-abortion scholar declined the honor over the school's decision to give President Barack Obama an honorary degree.

Notre Dame said that Dana Gioia will be presented with the Laetare Medal during the school's May 16 commencement ceremony. Gioia, who had won several top poetry awards, was appointed NEA chairman by President George W. Bush in 2003. He held the position for more than six years.

His time leading the federal arts agency included two widely discussed reports that alleged a dangerously expanding population of nonreaders and championing jazz as a uniquely American art form. Gioia's collection of poetry, "Interrogations at Noon," won the 2002 American Book Award.

"In his vocation as poet and avocation as arts administrator, Dana Gioia has given vivid witness to the mutual flourishing of faith and culture," said Notre Dame's president, the Rev. John Jenkins. "By awarding him our university's highest honor we hope both to celebrate and participate in that witness."

The Laetare Medal, which the university describes as the most prestigious honor for American Catholics, has been awarded annually since 1883.

Previous winners have included President John F. Kennedy, anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean, actor-activist Martin Sheen, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin and jazz musician Dave Brubeck.

Last year was the first time the medal wasn't given out.

Harvard University law professor Mary Ann Glendon, who was U.S. ambassador to the Vatican for two years under President George W. Bush, declined the award. Notre Dame had come under criticism from Roman Catholic bishops and others for honoring Obama since his stances on abortion rights and embryonic stem-cell research contradicted church teachings.

The university said it didn't know of anyone else who had agreed to accept the Laetare Medal but then declined it.


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