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Richard W. Fisher, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Admiral B.R. Inman, the Lyndon B. Johnson Centennial Chair at the University of Texas at Austin, are the 2006 recipients of The American Assembly's Service to Democracy Award.
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| The Service to Democracy Award was instituted in 1980 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of The American Assembly. |
The Dwight D. Eisenhower Medal for Public Service, named for The Assembly's founder, is presented to national leaders who exemplify the principle on which President founded the Assembly: to reconcile divergent views in order to accomplish a common purpose.
The medals will be presented at ceremonies later this year. Inman's will be awarded June 12 in Austin, Texas, at the launch of the Next Generation Project. Fisher will receive his on Oct. 18 at a ceremony in Dallas.
Fisher has served the public good in increasingly complex roles throughout his career. His accomplishments during these assignments represent a record of commitment to public service at the highest levels. As U.S. trade representative with the rank of ambassador from 1997 to 2001, he oversaw the implementation of NAFTA and various agreements with Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Chile and Singapore. He was the principal deputy for negotiating the bilateral accords that led to China's and Taiwan's entries into the World Trade Organization. Fisher is also the former vice chair of Kissinger McLarty Associates, a strategic advisory firm chaired by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
The son of immigrant parents with no formal education, Fisher attended the U.S. Naval Academy, graduated from Harvard University, read Latin American politics at Oxford University and received an M.B.A. from Stanford University. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Admiral Inman's record of achievement spans the public sector, business, government and education. A 1950 graduate of the University of Texas, Inman spent 31 years in the Navy and was the first naval intelligence officer to achieve four-star rank. While on active duty, he served as director of the National Security Agency and deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1983, he moved to Austin to serve as chair and chief executive officer of Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, a private partnership created to help the United States preserve its edge in computer technology.
From 1987 to 1990, Inman served as chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and in 1987 was named an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He was granted tenure in August 2001 and holds the Lyndon Baines Johnson Centennial Chair.
While serving as chair of The American Assembly, Fisher created the Next Generation Project , a multiyear initiative aimed at examining the global threats and challenges faced by the United States in the 21st century. Inman, a trustee of the Assembly, chairs the Advisory Council for this initiative and introduced the Assembly to the project's director, Francis J. Gavin.
Past recipients of the award include George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, W. Averell Harriman, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Sandra Day O'Connor, Colin Powell, David Rockefeller, Brent Scowcroft, George Shultz, Cyrus Vance and Paul Volcker.
The American Assembly, an affiliate of Columbia University, was founded by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1950 as one of this country's first national, nonpartisan public policy institutions. It commissions research and authoritative books; sponsors conferences; brings leading experts together; and issues reports of findings and recommendations addressed to policymakers, lawmakers and the public. |
