Lewis E. Lehrman was presented the National Humanities Medal at the White House in 2005 for his work in American history. He has been a member of the Advisory Committee of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and the Lincoln Forum. In 2013, Lehrman was named a Distinguished Director of the Abraham Lincoln Association.
Lehrman has written and lectured widely on American history and economics. He also writes for the www.abrahamlincoln.org which has created award-winning websites on the 16th President, all linked to: www.AbrahamLincolnsClassroom.org.
Lehrman is the author of Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point (Stackpole Books, 2008), Churchill, Roosevelt & Company; Studies in Character and Statecraft (Stackpole Books, 2017), Lincoln & Churchill: Statesmen at War (Stackpole Books, 2018), The True Gold Standard (TLI, 2011, 2013), Money, Gold, and History (TLI, 2013), Lincoln “by littles” (TLI, 2013), and The American Founders (TLI, 2013). He has written for publications such as Harper’s, the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Greenwich Time, the Harrisburg Patriot-News, the New York Sun, National Review, The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator and Policy Review.
Mr. Lehrman co-founded the Lincoln & Soldiers Institute at Gettysburg College which annually awards the Lincoln Prize for the best work on the Lincoln era. (It is now the Lincoln Prize at Gettysburg College). There he has taught the Lincoln Senior Seminar. Lewis Lehrman and Richard Gilder established the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University which awards the Frederick Douglass Prize. With Washington College and George Washington’s Mount Vernon, they created the George Washington Book Prize.
They built the Gilder Lehrman Collection of original historical manuscripts and documents to teach American History from primary sources (www.gilderlehrman.org). The collection is on deposit for public access at the New York Historical Society. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has developed its teaching program for high schools and colleges throughout America and England (www.historynow.org). In November 2010, Messrs Gilder and Lehrman received the William E. Simon Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Social Entrepreneurship for their work promoting the study of American history through the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Mr. Lehrman received his B.A. from Yale and his M.A. in History from Harvard. He was a Carnegie Teaching Fellow in History at Yale and was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in History at Harvard. Mr. Lehrman is widely known for his run for Governor of New York in 1982. In 1983, Mr. Lehrman was the Cardinal Cooke honoree of the Archdiocese of New York for his early work developing scholarships for New York inner-city schools. He has been a trustee of the American Enterprise Institute, the Morgan Library, the Manhattan Institute and the Heritage Foundation. He is a former Chairman of the Committee on Humanities of the Yale University Council.
In April of 1987, Mr. Lehrman joined Morgan Stanley & Company, investment bankers, as a Senior Advisor and a Director of Morgan Stanley Asset Management. In 1988, he became a Managing Director of the firm. He is presently Senior Partner of L. E. Lehrman & Co., an investment firm he established.
Lewis E. Lehrman was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He and his wife, Louise, have five adult children. He has been awarded Honorary Degrees from Babson College (Babson Park, MA), Gettysburg College (Gettysburg, PA), Lincoln College (Lincoln, IL), Marymount University (Arlington, VA) and Thomas Aquinas College (Santa Paula, CA).