Walter Isaacson, the Leonard Lauder Professor of American History and Values and co-chair of the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane, was awarded a National Humanities Medal by President Joe Biden. The medal recognizes individuals and organizations whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of and engagement with history, literature, languages, philosophy and other humanities subjects.

Laura Rosanne Adderley, associate professor of history, was named a finalist for the Thomas Ehrlich Civically Engaged Faculty Award, presented by the Campus Compact coalition of universities. Nominees are considered for their collaboration with communities, institutional impact and academic work. Adderley was nominated by the Tulane Center for Public Service for her community-based initiatives rooted in public humanities.

Katrina: A History, 1915-2015, written by Andy Horowitz, an assistant professor of history at the School of Liberal Arts, was named the Humanities Book of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.

Leonard Lauder Professor of American History and Values Walter Isaacson wrote the cover story, “The Vaccine Revolution,” for TIME Magazine’s Jan. 18 issue. In his story, Isaacson writes about his experience being in a clinical trial for the COVID-19 vaccine, how the COVID-19 vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech were developed and the role of mRNA. “The plague year of 2020 will be remembered as the time when these traditional vaccines were supplanted by something fundamentally new: genetic vaccines, which deliver a gene or piece of genetic code into human cells,” he wrote.

“By shining a light on gene editing, the Nobel committee is bringing a needed awareness of the wonders of nature — and of the technology that will increasingly determine how nature works.”

“Most accounts of Katrina begin when the levees broke and conclude not long after. But these stories offer a denuded sense of what happened. … Somebody had to build the levees before they could break.”