The Immigration and Ethnic History Society is pleased to announce that Alan M. Kraut and George J. Sánchez are the 2017 recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award. Professors Kraut and Sánchez will be honored at the annual IEHS banquet, which will be held in New Orleans on Friday, April 7. For more information, please contact IEHS Secretary, Timothy Draper at tdraper@waubonsee.edu.
Alan M. Kraut is University Professor of History and an affiliate faculty member of the School of International Service at American University in Washington, DC. During his remarkable career, Professor Kraut has been a prolific scholar, an engaged public intellectual, an outstanding teacher, and a generous mentor. His publications have made significant contributions to the fields of U.S. immigration and ethnic history, the history of medicine, and the U.S. Civil War. The prize-winning author or editor of nine books, he is best known for Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the “Immigrant Menace;” The Huddled Masses: The Immigrant in American Society, 1880-1921; and Goldberger’s War: The Life and Work of a Public Health Crusader. Professor Kraut has also been an indefatigable public historian. He is a frequent consultant on PBS and History Channel documentaries and currently serves as chair of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island History Advisory Committee. Professor Kraut’s record of service to the profession is equally impressive. Among other things, he is past president of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society and the Organization of American Historians, an elected fellow of the prestigious Society of American Historians, and non-resident fellow of the Migration Policy Institute. Last but not least, Professor Kraut has been recognized for his teaching excellence at American University, and countless students and junior faculty have benefitted from his generous and altruistic mentorship.
George J. Sánchez is Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity, and History at the University of Southern California, where he also serves as Vice Dean for Diversity and Strategic Initiatives. Sánchez is the author of Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (1993), which won six awards, including the IEHS Theodore Saloutos award; as well as numerous influential articles, reports, and edited anthologies that have shaped the fields of Chicano, Latino, and Ethnic Studies. For two decades, his co-edited book series, “American Crossroads: New Works in Ethnic Studies,” at the University of California Press, has identified, shaped, and showcased the work of a new generation of ethnic studies scholars, many of whom have also become prize-winning authors. Sánchez is a past president of the American Studies Association. In 2010, he received the Outstanding Latino/a Faculty in Higher Education (Research Institutions) Award from the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education, Inc. In 2011, the American Historical Association awarded him the first ever Equity Award for excellence in recruiting and retaining underrepresented populations in the historical profession. Indeed, through his mentorship of undergraduate students in the Ronald McNair Scholars Program and First Generation College Student Initiative at the University of Southern California, and through his teaching of doctoral students, dozens of first generation and underrepresented students have secured tenured academic positions across the country.
Please join us in congratulating Professors Alan M. Kraut and George J. Sánchez.