Gleaves Whitney
Gleaves Whitney began his role as executive director of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation on September 1, 2020. He is the fourth person to lead the Foundation as it fosters increased awareness of the life, career, values, and legacy of America’s 38th President.
Gleaves Whitney was the director of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies from 2003 until his selection as the Foundation’s Executive Director. Receiving a National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 2012, he established the first sustained and comprehensive common ground initiative in U.S. higher education. Since 2015 he has worked with his colleague Jon Lauck to revive Midwestern history as an academic discipline; together they have hosted six major conferences and edited four books. In addition, Gleaves launched the first presidential Q&A column in the nation, Ask Gleaves, in which he fielded questions from political junkies around the world. Under his direction, the Hauenstein Center’s Cook Leadership Academy has become a premiere center for leadership excellence. The fellow candidates have met with four U.S. Presidents, three First Ladies, two Vice Presidents, four Secretaries of State, one U.N. ambassador, more than one dozen state governors, and a host of business and non-profit entrepreneurs. For more about Gleaves’s work with Ralph Hauenstein, click here.
Read Gleaves Whitney’s Essays
Among Gerald Ford’s firsts was to be the first Republican to make a place in the White House for a full-time scholar.