Eliot Circular

Navy Secretary Wins Eliot Award

Richard Danzig ’65 is first recipient of medal honoring Reed's spiritual godfather.

National security expert Richard Danzig ’65 is the first recipient of the Thomas Lamb Eliot Award for Lifetime Achievement by a Reed College Graduate. His contributions to his field and commitment to public service exemplify the spirit and integrity of T.L. Eliot, who encouraged Simeon and Amanda Reed to found the college.

Richard Danzig ‘65

"Richard Danzig ‘65
Photo by Leah Nash

Danzig served as Secretary of the Navy during the Clinton administration and is the chairman of the board for the Center for a New American Security. He serves as a trustee of the RAND Corporation and is a member of the Defense Policy Board. Danzig holds degrees in political science from Reed, a BPhil and a DPhil from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a JD from Yale Law School. He was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Byron White, taught at both Harvard and Stanford, and spent two years as a member of the Harvard Society of Fellows. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he served as a senior adviser to Senator Barack Obama.

At his acceptance speech during the Centennial Celebration in September, Danzig lauded the benefits of a Reed education “Built into the DNA of Reed is . . . the gift of Western culture,” he said. “That expanded to become global culture, a richness of thought that constitutes our heritage. Through this institution we got a chance to see it and see it refracted through the prism of all the different minds of the people who were here with us.”