Distinguished Alumni Award - Arts & Humanities

Richard Reeves ’60 Hon. D. Eng. ’87

Historian, teacher, political commentator, award-winning telejournalist: These are just a few of the titles Richard Reeves ’60 Hon. D. Eng. ’87 has held since he graduated from Stevens. But of all of these titles, his favorite is simply author, a title he has been called 20 times.

Mr. Reeves’ career is long and varied. Among his 20 books are a trilogy on Presidents Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan. He’s the current senior lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. His career as an author began in 1975 with A Ford, Not a Lincoln. His current project, Infamy, tells the story of the internment of Japanese-Americans and Japanese during World War II, comes out in January 2015.

He began his career in journalism at age 23 by founding The Phillipsburg Free Press in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. He has won all of television’s major documentary awards: an Emmy for “Lights, Camera … Politics;’’ a Columbia-DuPont Award for “Struggle for Birmingham;’’ and a George Foster Peabody Award for “Red Star Over Khyber.’’ His journalism career has taken him from the Newark Evening News and the New York Herald Tribune (where he held the title of correspondent) to The New York Times, where he served as chief political correspondent.

Named a “literary lion’’ by the New York Public Library, Mr. Reeves has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist and juror. He has won a number of print journalism awards and his syndicated column appears each Friday on Yahoo! News.

He was the Goldman Lecturer on American Civilization and Government at the Library of Congress in 1998; the lectures were published by Harvard University Press under the title, What the People Know: Freedom and the Press.

His work is not limited to news as he has appeared in two feature films, “Dave’’ and “Seabiscuit.’’