September 17, 1985
The President today announced his intention to appoint Richard B. Morris to be a member of the
Permanent Committee for the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise for a term of 8 years. He will
succeed Philip B. Kurland.
Dr. Morris is the Gouverneur Morris professor emeritus of history at Columbia University. Prior
to teaching at Columbia, he was a professor at City University. He was a visiting professor at the
University of Hawaii and Princeton University; a distinguished professor at the Free University of
Berlin; and a Fulbright research scholar at the Sorbonne. He has served as president of the
American Historical Association and of the Society of American Historians. He received a New
York State special citation for historic preservation in 1982.
He graduated from City College of New York (A.B., 1924), Columbia University (A.M., Ph.D.,
1925, 1930), and Hebrew Union College (L.H.D., 1963). He received his Litt.D. in 1976 from
Columbia University and Rutgers University. He is married, has two children, and resides in
Mount Vernon, NY. He was born July 24, 1904, in New York City.