Four distinguished alumni awarded Wilbur Cross Medals

The Graduate School of Arts & Sciences (GSAS) awarded Wilbur Cross Medals on October 7 to four alumni, whose scholarship and other contributions were celebrated during a series of campus events. 

The Wilbur Cross Medals, the highest honor the Graduate School bestows on its alumni, are given annually by the GSAS Alumni Association for exceptional teaching, scholarship, public service, or academic administration. The awards celebrate the legacy of service and achievements of Wilbur Lucius Cross 1889 PhD, who served as dean of the Graduate School from 1916 to 1930 and was Connecticut’s governor from 1930 to 1939.

This year’s honorees are developmental geneticist Anne Ferguson Smith ’89 PhD (Biology), the Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics at the University of Cambridge; Renaissance literature scholar John Guillory ’79 PhD, (English Language and Literature), the Julius Silver Professor of English Emeritus at New York University; computer scientist Kai Li ’86 PhD (Computer Science), the Paul M. Wythes ’55, P’86 and Marcia R. Wythes P’86 Professor at Princeton University; and the late Yale political scientist and founder of the Program on Agrarian Studies James C. Scott '67 PhD (Political Science), who had learned he was receiving the Wilbur Cross Medal before his death on July 19. Brief biographies of the honorees were published in an earlier announcement of the medal winners.

Ferguson-Smith, Guillory, and Lee returned to campus to receive their awards and to take part in discussions with faculty and students in their respective GSAS departments. Each also gave a public lecture. Sociologist Nancy Lee Peluso, a professor in the University of California-Berkeley’s Graduate School in Society & Environment, and Ian Shapiro '83 PhD (Political Science), ’87 JD, Sterling Professor of Political Science and Global Studies at Yale, delivered a lecture in honor of Scott, whose life was also celebrated that day at a gathering of his colleagues, friends, and family at the Yale Farm.

The Wilbur Cross Medal citation for each of the honorees follows.

Anne C. Ferguson-Smith ’89 PhD

Since completing your graduate studies at Yale, you have made seminal discoveries in the field of epigenetics and been an exemplary leader at the University of Cambridge. 

You received your PhD in the Department of Biology under the supervision of Frank Ruddle. Your doctoral work comprises one of the earliest studies of vertebrate hox genes, which we now know to govern the development of the body plan in all animals. 

Since leaving Yale, you have focused your efforts on mammalian epigenetics, the process by which modifications to the DNA can influence gene activity. Through your innovative approaches, you have illuminated the mechanism of genetic imprinting, a form of epigenetic control in which only the genetic contribution from the mother or father is active in the offspring. Imprinting is important for embryonic development, and abnormal imprinting has been linked to human disease. 

As the Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, you have served as the head of the Department of Genetics and the pro-vice-chancellor of the university, where you have been a strong proponent of supporting basic research. 

You have published more than 230 research papers and received prestigious awards such as Commander of the Order of the British Empire and election as a fellow of the Royal Society. 

In recognition of your achievements in scholarship and leadership, the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association is proud to award you its highest honor, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal. 

John David Guillory ’79 PhD

Your distinguished career has transformed the ways in which the discipline of literary studies understands itself. Working primarily in the areas of early modern literature and the history of criticism, you have published books and essays whose analytical sophistication, deep erudition, and rhetorical force have inspired and renovated the field. 

Your first book, Poetic Authority: Spenser, Milton, and Literary History, explored a pivotal moment for the conceptualization of poetic vocation. Your next book, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation, revolutionized the profession’s thinking about which texts we read and why, rising above partisanship and redirecting the canon wars of the 1980s. 

Your third book, Professing Criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary Study, is a monumental work that analyzed the emergence of literature as a subject for professional scrutiny and offered a powerful rationale for literary study rooted in scholarly tradition. It was heralded by numerous publications and on the front page of The New York Times, making you one of the most widely cited literary scholars working today. Moreover, you are celebrated for your institutional service to the profession and your extraordinary teaching career at institutions including Yale, and — for the last 25 years — New York University. 

Your illuminating writings offer a powerful account of literary criticism’s place in the school and in the world. 

In recognition of your scholarship and service, the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association is proud to award you its highest honor, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal. 

Kai Li ’86 PhD

Pioneer in computer systems, parallel computing, storage systems, machine learning, and scientific computing, generous mentor and successful entrepreneur, you have inspired generations of students and colleagues with your pursuit of knowledge and passion for pedagogy. 

Your scholarship and impact are outstanding. You are an ACM Fellow, an IEEE Fellow, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and a member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences. You were inducted into the National Academy of Engineering and have won “most influential” paper awards in seven areas. 

You have identified fundamental barriers to progress in computer systems and found novel solutions. Your techniques opened research in Distributed Shared Memory. You developed and brought to market a communication mechanism, Infiniband, now the standard for data center networking. You pioneered benchmark standards for multi-core machines, influencing all modern high-performance processors. You co-founded Data Domain, which enables file backup using far less storage than previously required. And in machine learning and computer vision, you co-led the development of ImageNet, which propelled deep learning as the mainstream machine learning method in numerous domains. 

Beyond your technical achievements, you co-founded the Asian American Scholar Forum that promotes academic belonging and equality. At Princeton, you have educated generations of computer scientists through your famous course on operating systems. And at Yale, you generously serve on the Engineering Dean’s Leadership Council. 

In recognition of your extraordinary achievements in scholarship, education, and entrepreneurship, the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association is proud to award you its highest honor, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal. 

James C. Scott ’67 PhD

Sterling Professor Emeritus James C. Scott taught at Yale for 45 years, with appointments in the Departments of Political Science and Anthropology, and in the School of the Environment. His work focused on people who resist being captured by states and dogmas. 

Jim, too, eluded the constraint of academic disciplines. Renowned for his wide-ranging social theory, and as a giant in Southeast Asian Studies, he transformed peasant studies into the capacious field of agrarian studies. He wrote field-altering books, including The Moral Economy of the Peasant, The Art of Not Being Governed, and the forthcoming In Praise of Floods. The interdisciplinary Program in Agrarian Studies he founded at Yale has been emulated at institutions across the world. 

As president of the Association for Asian Studies, Jim launched new directions in border-crossing scholarship. He tirelessly supported intellectual life in Myanmar, founding the bilingual Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship, and advocating against state violence. 

The rhythms of life on his farm in Durham, Connecticut  infused Jim’s intellectual pursuits with agrarian sensibilities: rising early to tend to the farm, writing in the morning, teaching in the afternoon, and hosting dinners in the evening. He cultivated not just gardens but ideas; his generous feasts nourished bodies and minds. On his farm, as in the world, he was, and remains, in a field of his own.

In recognition of his contributions to Yale and the world, the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association is proud to award James Scott its highest honor, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal. 

Written by Suzanne Gonzalez