Michael Novak
George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Michael Novak is the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy and Director of Social and Political Studies for the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He received a B.A. from Stonehill College, an S.T.B. from Gregorian University in Rome, and a M.A. in the history and philosophy of religion from Harvard University. He has served on the faculty of Harvard University, Stanford University, State University of New York at Old Westbury, Syracuse University (Ledden-Watson Chair), and University of Notre Dame (Welch Chair). From 1974 to 1980, he served in the White House as Adviser for the Office of Ethnic Affairs, and twice served as the U.S. Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Commission, once to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is one of the most prominent neoconservative writers in the United States and Latin America, best known for his moral defense of capitalism. As the author of over twenty influential books, all widely translated, he is best known for The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, which has been reprinted often in Latin America, published underground in Poland in 1984, and sold in Czechoslovakia, Germany, China and Hungary. Novak serves on editorial boards of several publications and organizations here and abroad. He was co-founder of This World, Crisis, and First Things, and was publisher/editor of Crisis until 1996. His essays, reviews, and syndicated columns have appeared in The New Republic, Commentary, Harper's, First Things, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and National Review, as well as Theological Studies, The Yale Law Journal, The Public Interest, and The Review of Politics. He has received numerous awards, including the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1994, the International Prize by the Institution for World Capitalism, and most recently the Gold Medal of the Pennsylvania Society in 2001.
