American Historians Honored at Jay Medal Soirée

The Jay Heritage Center in Rye, New York will celebrate America at 250 with a toast to Jay Medal honorees Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annette Gordon-Reed, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University and award-winning Lincoln historian Harold Holzer at their The Jay Medal Soirée.

The Jay Medal for Service was created in 2012 to recognize individuals who demonstrate a selfless spirit of commitment to and engagement with their community mirroring the multifaceted contributions of John Jay and his descendants. These honorees have demonstrated through their life's work that our shared narratives as a country, complicated as they are, can be better illuminated through the highest caliber of ongoing scholarship and advocacy. Honorees are selected for their excellence in the fields of American history, environmental stewardship, social justice or civic engagement.

Joining the celebration will be Chief Judge of the State of New York and the New York Court of Appeals, Honorable Rowan D. Wilson and historian and philanthropist Elihu Rose who will present the awards at JHC's annual Soirée. Special guests will include David Blight, Frank Cogliano, Joanne Freeman, and Beverly Gage.

The Jay Medal Soirée will be held Saturday, September 19, 2026 at the Jay Estate from 5:30-9:30pm. Cocktails, dinner, award ceremony and dancing. Cocktail Attire.

PURCHASE ADVANCE TABLES AND TICKETS HERE Scroll down for more info about tables and tickets. Request a print invitation by emailing jayheritagecenter@gmail.com

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THE JAY MEDAL HONOREES

Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard. Gordon-Reed has won sixteen book prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2009 and the National Book Award in 2008, for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W.W. Norton, 2008). In addition to articles and reviews, her other works include Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (UVA Press, 1997), Vernon Can Read! A Memoir, a collaboration with Vernon Jordan (PublicAffairs, 2001), Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History (Oxford University Press, 2002), a volume of essays that she edited, Andrew Johnson (Times Books/Henry Holt, 2010), with Peter S. Onuf, “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination (Liveright Publishing, 2016), and On Juneteenth (Liveright Publishing, 2021). Her most recent work is an illuminating collection of Thomas Jefferson's writings called Jefferson on Race: A Reader (Princeton University Press, 2026) that explores how the life of the author of the Declaration of Independence could be filled with so many contradictions about liberty and slavery.

Gordon-Reed was the Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at the University of Oxford (Queens College) 2014-2015. Between 2010 and 2015, she was the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She was the 2018-2019 President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. She is the current President of the Ames Foundation. A selected list of her honors includes a fellowship from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, a Guggenheim Fellowship in the humanities, a MacArthur Fellowship, the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Award, the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, the George Washington Book Prize, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Gordon-Reed served as a member of the Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College from 2010 to 2018. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011 and was a member of the Academy’s Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2019, she was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society.

Most recently, Gordon-Reed was the President of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) from April 2025- April 2026 following service on its Executive Board.

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Harold Holzer is the Jonathan F. Fanton Director of The Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College in New York City, a post he assumed in 2015 after 23 years as senior vice president of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He also served for six years as chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation, and the previous 10 years as co-chair of the U. S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, appointed by President Bill Clinton. In 2008, Holzer was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush.

Holzer is the author, co-author, or editor of 55 books on Lincoln and the Civil War era. His 2014 Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion won the Gilder-Lehrman Lincoln Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize from the Columbia University School of Journalism, and the Goldsmith Prize from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy and Harvard University’s Kennedy School. His most recent book is Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration (Dutton, 2024). He also edited Hunter 150, The official publication marking the college’s sesquicentennial in 2020. Holzer’s 2012 book, Lincoln: How Abraham Lincoln Ended Slavery in America, was the official young adult companion book to the Steven Spielberg film Lincoln, for which Holzer served as script consultant. He also authored The Civil War in 50 Objects, which traces the conflict through the collections of the New-York Historical Society, where he served for three years as the Roger Hertog Fellow. In 2025, Holzer was named a member of the Class of 2025 Guggenheim Fellows.

In addition, Holzer has written some 650 articles and reviews for both popular magazines and scholarly journals, published 17 monographs, and contributed chapters or prefaces to 67 additional volumes. Among his many other awards are a second-place Lincoln Prize in 2005 for Lincoln at Cooper Union, and book prizes from the Freedom Foundation, the Manuscript Society of America, the New York State Archives, the Saint-Gaudens Memorial, the Civil War Round Table of New York, and the Illinois State Historical Society, along with lifetime achievement awards from the Lincoln Groups of New York, Washington, Peekskill, Kansas City, and Detroit; as well as honorary degrees from nine colleges and universities. Holzer is a member of many history boards and advisory committees, and for 20 years has served as vice chairman of The Lincoln Forum. He is now a Trustee of The Met.

Holzer lectures throughout the nation and appears frequently on C-SPAN and the History Channel; he has served as an on-air commentator on CBS, PBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and the BBC. Before joining the Met in 1992, Holzer spent his early career as a journalist, a campaign and Congressional press secretary for Rep. Bella Abzug, an aide to New York Governor Mario Cuomo, and as spokesman for New York’s PBS station, WNET.

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THE JAY MEDAL PRESENTERS

The Honorable Rowan D. Wilson, Chief Judge of the State of New York and the New York Court of Appeals, was born in Pomona, California, and grew up in Berkeley, California. He received his A.B. degree from Harvard College in 1981, and his J.D. degree from Harvard Law School in 1984. He was admitted to the bar of the State of California in 1985, and the bar of the State of New York in 1987. From 1984 to 1986, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable James R. Browning, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco, California. In 1986, he joined the firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York City as an associate, and was elected to partnership there in 1991, in which position he continued until February 2017. His practice encompassed a wide variety of matters, including antitrust, intellectual property, securities and common-law fraud, contract, labor and employment, civil rights and first amendment issues.

On January 15, 2017, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo nominated Judge Wilson to serve as an Associate Judge of the Court of Appeals, and the New York State Senate confirmed his nomination on February 6, 2017. On April 10, 2023, Governor Kathy Hochul nominated Judge Wilson to serve as Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals and the State of New York. The New York State Senate confirmed his nomination on April 18, 2023.

While in private practice, Judge Wilson served on the boards of several charitable and not-for-profit organizations and handled numerous pro bono matters.

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Elihu Rose graduated from Yale University in 1954, after which he served in the U.S. Air Force for two years. Since 1956, he has been a Partner of Rose Associates, a real-estate investment and management firm that builds, owns, and manages residential and commercial properties in the metropolitan New York area. Mr. Rose received his Ph.D. in International Relations in 1978 from New York University and shortly thereafter became an Adjunct Professor of military history at several institutions. He has taught at Yale University, Columbia University, University of Maryland and New York University. He has also lectured at several other institutions nationally and internationally, including the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. In 2002 he received The Outstanding Teaching Award from NYU. Mr. Rose has published articles on military history and sociology in academic as well as popular journals.

Mr. Rose is the Chairman Emeritus of the Park Avenue Armory and former Chairman of the Board of the International Center of Photography. He also served on the boards of Thirteen/WNET, the Lincoln Center Theater, the Library of America and on the Advisory Board of the National Museum of American History (Smithsonian Institution). He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1992 he received the Superior Public Service Medal from the U.S. Navy and in 2004 the Outstanding Civilian Service Medal from the U.S. Army. Elihu Rose lives in Manhattan. He is married to the former Susan Wechsler and is the father of three daughters.

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