Claremont Graduate University President Emeritus John D. Maguire to Receive 2009 Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal

            WASHINGTON, D.C. (May 6, 2009) – The Fulbright Association will award educator and civil rights activist John D. Maguire the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal on May 12 at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C.  Poet Rita Dove, composer Philip Glass, and entrepreneur Ruth Owades will also receive the honor.  The award recognizes distinguished Fulbright Program alumni for their career achievements and civic, educational, and cultural contributions. 

            Dr. Maguire was named president emeritus of Claremont Graduate University in 1998 after serving as president for 17 years.  He is engaged in racial and social justice community building projects as director and senior fellow in the Institute for Democratic Renewal in the University’s School of Politics and Economics.  Dr. Maguire was a colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and is a life director of the King Center where he served in its initial year (1968-69) as chairman of the board.  He also serves on the boards of Union Theological Seminary, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, and the Claremont Museum of Art.  He is co-creator of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Awards.

            After graduating from Washington and Lee University, Dr. Maguire received a Fulbright fellowship to Scotland in 1953.  He graduated summa cum laude from the Yale Divinity School, then completed a Yale doctorate in theology and psychiatry.  In 1965, while a Wesleyan University faculty member, he was a Fulbright scholar engaged in post-doctoral research at the University of Tübingen in Germany. 

            “Coming directly after college to a lad that had never been abroad, my Fulbright in Edinburgh made me ever-thereafter a thoroughgoing internationalist.  It set a new lifetime’s context for my thinking and my work,” said Dr. Maguire.  “My Fulbright award in Germany helped define my life:  I knew after that year that I did not want to become a professional theologian, that my interests were broader and lay elsewhere.  I owe more to my Fulbright experiences than I can ever adequately portray.”

             The Fulbright Program is an international educational exchange initiative administered by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State.  It was created in 1946 by legislation sponsored by the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas.  There are Fulbright exchanges between the United States and more than 150 other countries.  There are more than 275,000 Fulbright alumni throughout the world.

            The Fulbright Association is a private, nonprofit organization of Fulbright alumni and friends committed to advancing international education and people-to-people diplomacy.  It has 46 chapters throughout the United States and collaborates with more than 70 sister Fulbright alumni organizations abroad.  The Fulbright Association inaugurated the biennial Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal Dinner in 2000 to recognize the important role Fulbright grantees have had in creating a better future for communities throughout the world.

            “Since my Fulbright fellowship (1953-1954) marked the beginning of my adult professional life, this Lifetime Achievement Medal is a kind of bookend,” said Dr. Maguire.  “It crowns over 50 years of work and is an overwhelming validation of a varied, exhilarating life.  I cherish the affirmation that accompanies it and shall treasure it the rest of the way.”  

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