Andrew Delbanco is President of The Teagle Foundation and Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies at Columbia University. His books include The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War (Penguin Press, 2018); College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be (Princeton University Press, 2012); and Melville: His World and Work (Knopf, 2005), which won the Lionel Trilling Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in biography. Professor Delbanco publishes frequently on American literature, history, and education in The New York Review of Books and other journals and periodicals. He has won accolades for his teaching, notably the Great Teacher Award from the Society of Columbia Graduates. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, a trustee of the Library of America, former trustee of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and trustee emeritus of the National Humanities Center. Professor Delbanco earned his A.B., A.M., and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. In 2001, he was named by Time Magazine as “America's Best Social Critic,” and in 2012, he received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama.