About James H. Billington
James Hadley Billington was an American academic and author who taught history at Harvard and Princeton before serving for 42 years as CEO of four federal cultural institutions. He served as the 13th Librarian of Congress after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, and his appointment was approved unanimously by the U.S. Senate. He retired as Librarian on September 30, 2015. Billington and his daughter Susan were the first father and daughter to both be awarded Rhodes Scholarships and to use them to earn Doctorates of Philosophy at Oxford University. Billington pioneered the reconstruction, using privately raised funds, of Thomas Jefferson's original library, which was placed on permanent display in the Jefferson building in 2008. As director, he founded the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the center, and seven other new programs, as well as the Wilson Quarterly. He created the Library's first Young Readers Center in the Jefferson Building in 2009, and the first large-scale summer intern (Junior Fellows) program for university students in 1991.
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