AUSTIN, Texas—Admiral B. R. Inman, the Lyndon B. Johnson Centennial Chair at The University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs, has been named a 2006 recipient of the American Assembly’s prestigious Service to Democracy Award.
The other recipient is Richard W. Fisher, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
As recipients of the award, they will receive the Dwight D. Eisenhower Medal for Public Service, named for the Assembly’s founder. The medal is presented to national leaders who exemplify the principle on which the Assembly was founded: to reconcile divergent views in order to accomplish a common purpose.
Past recipients of the Service to Democracy Award include George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, W. Averell Harriman, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Sandra Day O’Connor, Colin Powell, David Rockefeller, Brent Scowcroft, George Shultz, Cyrus Vance and Paul Volcker.
Inman’s record of achievement spans the public sector, business, government and education. A 1950 graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, Inman spent 31 years in the Navy and was the first naval intelligence officer to achieve four-star rank. While on active duty, he served as director of the National Security Agency and deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1983, he moved to Austin to serve as chair and chief executive officer of Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, a private partnership created to help the United States preserve its edge in computer technology.
From 1987 to 1990, Inman was chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and in 1987 was named an adjunct professor at The University of Texas at Austin. He was granted tenure in 2001. From January through December 2005, he was interim dean of the LBJ School.
As U.S. trade representative with the rank of ambassador from 1997 to 2001, Fisher oversaw the implementation of NAFTA and various agreements with Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Chile and Singapore. He was the principal deputy for negotiating the bilateral accords that led to China’s and Taiwan’s entries into the World Trade Organization. He is also the former vice chair of Kissinger McLarty Associates, a strategic advisory firm chaired by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
While serving as chair of the American Assembly, Fisher created the Next Generation Project, a multiyear initiative aimed at examining the global threats and challenges faced by the United States in the 21st century. Inman, a trustee of the Assembly, chairs the Advisory Council for this initiative and introduced the Assembly to the project’s director, LBJ School Professor Francis J. Gavin.
The American Assembly, an affiliate of Columbia University, was founded by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1950 as one of this country’s first national, nonpartisan public policy institutions. It commissions research and authoritative books, sponsors conferences, brings leading experts together and issues reports of findings and recommendations addressed to policymakers, lawmakers and the public.
For more information contact: Marilyn Duncan, LBJ School of Public Affairs, 512-471-0817.
