John Kluge and Librarian of Congress James Billington congratulate Leszek Kolakowski, winner of the first Kluge Prize. - John Harrington
The John W. Kluge Center was established in the fall of 2000 with a gift of $60 million from John W. Kluge, Metromedia president and founding chairman of the James Madison Council. Located within the Office of Scholarly Programs, the center's goal is to bring the world's best thinkers to the Library of Congress where they can use the institution's unparalleled resources for research and interact with public policymakers in Washington.
The Kluge Center officially opened on May 7, 2003, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. In 2003 all postdoctoral fellowships offered by the center were filled by scholars from around the world. The second Henry Alfred Kissinger Lecture on foreign policy and international relations was given by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, former president of France. He discussed "The Preparation of the European Constitution."
On Nov. 5 the first John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences was awarded to Leszek Kolakowski, a scholar, philosopher, historian and writer whose worked inspired the anti-totalitarian youth movement inside his native Poland. The Kluge Prize of $1 million is awarded in areas of scholarship for which there are no Nobel prizes.
