Richard Norton Smith, a nationally recognized authority on the American
presidency and a familiar face to viewers of C-SPAN, as well as “The NewsHour
with Jim Lehrer,” will be the inaugural speaker of a new Lincoln Lecture Series
with the presentation of “Lincoln and Washburn University: Toward a New
America,” at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 6 in the Washburn Room, Memorial Union,
Washburn University. The lecture is free and open to the public. A book signing
will take place after the lecture.
The Lincoln Lecture Series was instituted in conjunction with a series of
events leading up to Washburn University’s sesquicentennial celebration in
2015. Washburn was established as Lincoln College by a charter issued by the
State of Kansas and the General Association of Congregational Ministers and
Churches of Kansas on Feb. 6, 1865.
Smith has served as director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and
Museum in West Branch, Iowa; the Dwight D. Eisenhower Center in Abilene, Kan.;
the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the Ronald Reagan Presidential
Foundation and the Reagan Center for Public Affairs in Simi Valley, Calif.; the
Gerald R. Ford Museum and Library in Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor, Mich.,
respectively; and the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of
Kansas in Lawrence.
Smith has published numerous books, including “An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of
Herbert Hoover” (1984); “The Harvard Century: The Making of a University to a
Nation” (1986) and “Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation”
(1993). His book, “Thomas E. Dewey and His Times,” was a finalist for the 1983
Pulitzer Prize.
A native of Leominster, Mass., Smith graduated magna cum laude from Harvard
University in 1975 with a degree in government.
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Amanda Hughes, university relations, (785) 670-2153
