7/29/2008 - AFS Life Trustee Richard M. Hunt Honored by Harvard
Dr. Richard McMasters Hunt has been honored with the 2008 Harvard Alumni Association Medal for extraordinary service to University on June 5, 2008. He is one of the three recipients of the award. Please read about the award below.
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2008/06.05/07-haa.html
http://harvardmagazine.com/2008/07/harvard-medalists.html
Richard Hunt had a very distinguished career at Harvard. He is a Harvard historian who joined the faculty at Harvard in 1960 and served there for 42 years, including 20 years as University Marshal. He taught a Core Curriculum course at Harvard for undergraduates on Weimar and Nazi Germany. He also served as Senior Lecturer in Social Studies, the Director of the Mellon Faculty Fellowship Program, Assistant and Associate Dean of the Graduate School of the Arts and Sciences, chairman of the Faculty Committee on Religion, and a member of the Social Studies and Center for European Studies committees. Since his retirement in 2002, he has remained involved in the Harvard community.
Dr. Hunt is a former President and current Vice Chair of the American Council on Germany.
Richard Hunt’s AFS involvement goes back to the Second World War. Mr. Hunt joined the American Field Service as a volunteer Ambulance Driver and served in India and Burma during World War II. He was eighteen at the time.
In an AFS Legacy Project interview in December of 2005 Dr. Hunt recalled what drew him to AFS.
I had an interview with Steve Galatti in New York City when I was simply trying to find out about more on the organization. I went to his office and it was quite an amazing experience because I could see that this was quite a man, quite a force and quite a personality. He told me about the organization in WWI and what the American Field Service had done in WWII and also was doing in 1944 and 1945.
During Hunt’s stay in India he met Mahatma Gandhi at a meeting near Hydrabad in October of 1945. When he asked Gandhi “Do you have any message that I could take back to Americans?” Gandhi enigmatically answered, “I am the message”. When Hunt completed his AFS service in 1945, he attended Yale University where he received his bachelor’s degree, followed by his master’s degree from Columbia University in 1951, and his Ph.D. in history from Harvard University in 1960.
In 1964, Richard Hunt became an AFS Trustee and was made a Life Trustee of AFS International in 1966. Among his many enduring accomplishments, credentials, and contributions to AFS, is his support of the American Soviet Youth Orchestra project. He also served as the faculty head of the AFS exchange students at Harvard.
For his deep commitment to AFS Dr. Hunt was honored at the AFS USA 5th Annual Gala at the United Nations in New York on October 19, 2006. Below is his photo at the Gala.
He served as a moderator at the AFS 60th Anniversary World Peace Forum at Columbia University leading discussion with AFS Ambulance Drivers, Ken Burns, and Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima on October 27, 2007.
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