Subdivision
| • | 503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors | [X] |
| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Walter B. Hewlett | | | Institution: | William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities, Stanford University | | | Year Elected: | 2006 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1944 | | | | | | |
Walter Hewlett is a gifted musician and has made numerous contributions of a scholarly nature to the study of music. Over the years, he has become a well-respected figure in the development of computer technology to the elucidation of a broad variety of key topics in music. He has also been active in philanthropic organizations, notably as an officer and director of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, one of the major non-profit foundations in the United States, which he founded with his parents. Hewlett succeeded his father as chairman of the board, and he has a very active role in defining the direction for the foundation's programs for the years ahead. The Foundation currently concentrates on education, the environment, global development, performing arts, and reproductive health care. Concomitantly, he has also been actively concerned with the governance of two of the country's leading universities: Harvard University and Stanford University. At the latter, he has held a faculty appointment and is a well-respected teacher. Hewlett plays several musical instruments, including the piano, cello, and organ, and he is a member of the Bohemian Club Orchestra. He is a director of numerous organizations, including the Packard Humanities Institute; the Stanford Theatre Foundation; and the Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of the Public Policy Institute of California. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Paul LeClerc | | | Institution: | Columbia University | | | Year Elected: | 2006 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1941 | | | | | | |
Paul LeClerc graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 1963 and spent the next academic year studying at the Sorbonne. Returning to New York City, he completed a Ph.D. in French literature at Columbia University. He joined the faculty of Union College (1966-79), where he chaired the Department of Modern Languages and the Division of Humanities, and received research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Philosophical Society to support his scholarly work on the French Enlightenment.
Dr. LeClerc returned to New York City in 1979 to join the central administration of the City University of New York, the nation's third largest university and its largest urban university system. He served successively as University Dean for Academic Affairs and Acting Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs for CUNY, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs of Baruch College, and, in 1988, President of Hunter College. He also held the position of Professor of French and taught during nearly every semester of his presidency.
Dr. LeClerc became President and Chief Executive Officer of the New York Public Library in late 1993. With collections now numbering some 55 million items, the New York Public consists of 89 libraries spread over 130 square miles of New York City. In 2005, there were 15 million physical reader visits to the library system and 20 million electronic visits. He retired in June 2011 and is now a Visiting Scholar in the Department of French and Romance Philology at Columbia University.
Paul LeClerc is the author or co-editor of five scholarly volumes on writers of the French Enlightenment, and his contributions to French culture earned him the Order of the Academic Palms (Officier) in 1989, the French Légion d'honneur (Chevalier) in 1996, and the French Légion d'honneur (Officier) in 2012. He is presently a trustee of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a Director of the National Book Foundation and the American Academy in Rome. He serves on the Editorial Board of The Complete Works of Voltaire (Oxford University) and on the Advisory Committee of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (Yale University). | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. David W. Packard | | | Institution: | Packard Humanities Institute; Stanford Theatre Foundation | | | Year Elected: | 2006 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1940 | | | | | | |
In 1985, David Packard developed the Ibycus Scholarly Computer, which was fully custom hardware and software and included a high-speed hardware "search engine." The machine was designed to read (and search) a CD-ROM containing large quantities of ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Nearly 300 of these were sold to universities and individual scholars to support teaching and research in these languages; many are still in use today. In 1987, he founded the Packard Humanities Institute (PHI), one of the five largest foundations supporting the humanities in the nation, with the purpose of supporting the use of technology in the humanities. Most early PHI projects involved the creation of databases of historic texts, from Greek Epigraphy to Benjamin Franklin. In 1999, PHI expanded to include archaeology, music, film preservation, and education. In archaeology, PHI organized and funded a major conservation program at Herculaneum in Italy, an international archaeological initiative in Albania, and an emergency rescue excavation at Zeugma in Turkey, including the conservation of dozens of Roman mosaics. In music, PHI organized and funded a new scholarly edition of the complete works of CPE Bach and is collaborating with the Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg to transform their definitive New Mozart Edition into a fully digital scholarly edition that can be kept up-to-date and will be freely available on the internet. In film preservation, PHI is building a new conservation center for the Library of Congress to house the Library's enormous collection of film, television, and recorded sound. PHI also provides major support for the UCLA Film and Television Archive. David Packard also founded the Stanford Theatre Foundation to renovate and operate the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto which for sixteen years has shown classic Hollywood films, all selected by Packard. | |
| 4 | Name: | Mr. Franklin A. Thomas | | | Institution: | Ford Foundation; The Study Group | | | Year Elected: | 2006 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1934 | | | Death Date: | December 22, 2021 | | | | | | |
Franklin A. Thomas was born in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from Franklin K. Lane High School, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at Columbia College in 1956 and a degree in law from Columbia University Law School in 1963. From 1956-60 he was a navigator in the United States Air Force, Strategic Air Command. In 1963, Mr. Thomas became an attorney for the Federal Housing and Home Finance Agency, and in 1964 he was named an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. From 1965-67 he served as Deputy Police Commissioner in Charge of Legal Matters for the New York City Police Department. From 1967-77, Mr. Thomas served as President and CEO of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, one of the nation's first public/private partnerships aimed at the comprehensive development (housing, business development, education, culture and recreation) of one of the nation's largest distressed urban communities. The Restoration Corporation has served as a model for thousands of similarly focused community-based development corporations throughout the U.S. and abroad. Mr. Thomas was Chair of the Rockefeller Foundation-funded Study Commission on U.S. Policy Toward South Africa from 1979-81 and later served as a member of the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on South Africa from 1985-87. In June 1979, he was elected President of the Ford Foundation, having joined the Foundation's Board of Trustees in 1977. During the seventeen years that he led the Ford Foundation, its assets quadrupled and he deployed those assets on behalf of social justice and economic freedom across the world. He retired from that position in 1996. The Study Group, which he heads, provides advice to leaders and organizations in the non-profit and governmental sectors in support of equitable human development worldwide. Mr. Thomas is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lyndon Baines Johnson Award for "Contributions to the Betterment of Urban Life," the John Jay and Alexander Hamilton Awards from Columbia College, and Columbia Law School's James Kent Medal for distinguished professional achievement. He is also the recipient of the 2008 Frederick Douglass Award and of Columbia University's Medal of Excellence. He has been granted honorary degrees from Bank Street College, Columbia University, Fordham University, New School University, Pace University, Pratt University and Yale University. Mr. Thomas is a director/trustee of several corporate and not for profit boards and serves as an advisor to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. From 2001-06 Mr. Thomas was chair of the September 11th Fund, created by the New York City Community Trust and the United Way of New York City in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Fund assisted victims, their families and affected communities. | |
| |