Robert M. Coles '50, Agree Professor of Social Ethics at the Graduate School of Education (GSE), will receive the nation's highest civilian honor--the Presidential Medal of Freedom--on Thursday.
"The first thing I thought of when the White House called me with the news was all the children that I've worked with over the last 25 years," Coles said. "Their stories and their lives all led to that phone call."
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is awarded by the president to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to national security interests, worlds peace or other significant public and private endeavors.
Coles--a child psychiatrist, recipient of the 1981 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Prize and a 1973 Pulitzer Prize winner--has worked to understand the lives of children from a variety of backgrounds.
As a neuropsychiatrist in the Air Force, Coles began working with children undergoing the stress of school desegregation when he was stationed in Louisiana during the 1960s.
"Over the last 30 years, I've worked as an anthropological field worker, even though I'm really a physician," Coles said. "I do my work in the home, neigh borhoods and schools.
"I began to learn early on that children and their families have stories to tell about their lives," Coles added.
Coles, a research Psychiatrist for University Health Services and a professor of psychiatry and medical humanities at the Harvard Medical School, has taught courses at several schools across the University since coming to Harvard in 1977.
Coles also teaches General Education 105: "The Literature of Social Reflection," using great works of Literature to advance moral and social inquiry. In recent years, the course has attracted more than 400 undergraduates.
"In literature we find a kind of human truth that does justice to the complexities and ambiguities of the human existence that we can't always find in social theory," Coles said.
The author of more than 50 books and 1,200 articles, reviews and essays since 1961, Coles says he "prefers using words that I was seeing and feeling rather than the words that I use when I write in technical journals."
"The White House official [who informed me of the honor] told me that the President and Mrs. Clinton had read my books going way back when they were in law school," Coles said.
After speaking a conference on the homeless on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., Coles said he will attend "a two hour shinding" at the White House with the 14 other Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients.
"I had to buy a suit for the occasion," Coles said, explaining that his three children told him that he could not wear his usual corduroys and sweaters to the White House ceremony.
Coles' colleagues said his past work "He has been tremendously influential in many domains throughout his career," said Jerome T. Murphy, dean of the GSE. "Each year there is a long line to enroll in his courses because he is so popular. He knows so much about kids, particularly kids who are dealing with poverty and who are at risk. He demonstrates such compassion and passion in his teaching." Read more in News
