Yale University Professor
He joined Yale University in 1962 as the Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History and in 1972 was named Sterling Professor of History, a position he held until achieving emeritus status in 1996. He served as acting dean and then dean of the Graduate School from 1973–78 and was the William Clyde DeVane Lecturer 1984-86 and again in the fall of 1995. Awards include the Graduate School's 1979 Wilbur Cross Medal and the Medieval Academy of America's 1985 Haskins Medal.
While at Yale, Pelikan won a contest sponsored by Field & Stream magazine for Ed Zern's column "Exit Laughing" to translate the motto of the Madison Avenue Rod, Gun, Bloody Mary & Labrador Retriever Benevolent Association ("Keep your powder, your trout flies and your martinis dry") into Latin. Pelikan's winning entry mentioned the martini first, but Pelikan explained that it seemed no less than fitting to have the apéritif come first. His winning entry:
Semper siccandae sunt: potio
Pulvis, et pelliculatio.
Pelikan was appointed to numerous leadership positions in American intellectual life. He was the president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was editor of the religion section of Encyclopædia Britannica, and in 1980 he founded the Council of Scholars at the Library of Congress.
In 1983 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected him to deliver the 12th annual Jefferson Lecture, the highest honor conferred by the federal government for outstanding achievement in the humanities. Pelikan's lecture became the basis for his book The Vindication of Tradition.
Pelikan gave the 1992–1993 Gifford lectures at the University of Aberdeen, which were published as the book Christianity and Classical Culture.
President Bill Clinton appointed Professor Pelikan to serve on the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. Dr. Pelikan received honorary degrees from 42 universities all over the world. At the age of 80, he was appointed scholarly director for the “Institutions of Democracy Project” at the Annenberg Foundation.
In 2004, having received the John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences, an honor he shared with the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, Pelikan donated his award ($500,000) to Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, of which he was a trustee. At the ceremony, he quoted a leitmotif passage from Goethe that had moved him all his life: "Was du ererbt von deinen Vaetern hast, Erwirb es um es zu besitzen" -- "Take what you have inherited from your fathers and work to make it your own."
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