The Award for Distinguished Service to the Humanities
| 2024 | Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University |
| 2021 2018 |
Annette Gordon-Reed, Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University Lonnie Bunch III, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution |
| 2015 | David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize winning author |
| 2012 | Patricia Meyer Spacks, author and President Emeritus of the AAC&U |
| 2009 | Douglas Greenberg, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University |
| 2006 | Gerald Early, Merle Kling Professor of Letters and Director of the Center for Humanities, Washington University in St. Louis |
| 2003 | Robert Pinsky, Professor of English and Creative Writing, Boston University and former Poet Laureate of the United States |
| 2000 | Richard Franke, Founder of the Chicago Humanities Festival and CEO Emeritus of The John Nuveen Company |
| 1997 | Joseph Epstein, Renowned Essayist and former Editor of The American Scholar |
| 1990 | John E. Sawyer, President Emeritus of Williams College and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation |
| 1988 | Daniel J. Boorstin, retired Librarian of Congress |
| 1985 | Robert M. Lumiansky, President Emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies and The Phi Beta Kappa Society |
| 1982 | Dumas Malone, the distinguished Jefferson scholar and Jefferson Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia |
| 1979 | Charles Frankel (awarded posthumously), teacher, philosopher and President Emeritus of The National Humanities Center |
| 1976 | Louis B. Wright, Director Emeritus of the Folger Shakespeare Library |
| 1973 | Howard Mumford Jones, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor for the Humanities at Harvard University |
| 1970 | Barnaby C. Keeney, former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and President Emeritus of Brown University |
Read more about the Distinguished Services to the Humanities Award.
The Sidney Hook Memorial Award
| 2024 | Ayanna Thompson, Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University and Executive Director, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies |
| 2021 2018 |
Viet Thanh Nguyen, Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California Nancy Weiss Malkiel, professor of history emerita at Princeton University |
| 2015 | David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University |
| 2015 | Jill Lepore, Author |
| 2012 | Martha Craven Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago |
| 2009 | John Seery, George Irving Thompson Memorial Professor of Government and Professor of Politics at Pomona College |
| 2006 | Charles Tilly, Joseph Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University |
| 2003 | Jonathan Spence, Sterling Professor of History at Yale University |
| 2000 | Natalie Zemon Davis, professor of history emerita at Princeton University |
| 1997 | Carolyn G. Heilbrun, professor of English literature emerita at Columbia University |
| 1994 | John Hope Franklin, James B. Duke Professor of History emeritus and professor of legal history in the Law School at Duke University |
| 1991 | Leon Lederman, former president of the AAAS and Frank L. Sulzberger Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago |