(Cincinnati, October 8) At the 1994 EHA meetings, Douglass C. North was awarded the first Jonathan Hughes Prize for Excellence in Teaching Economic History. Winners are chosen by the Economic History Association's Committee on Education and Teaching, which for 1993-94 consisted of David Mitch, Chair, Mary Schweitzer (Villanova), and Samuel Williamson (Miami). The Committee was impressed by the very thoughtful and enthusiastic letters it received nominating candidates for the Prize. Nominees came from a wide range of teaching situations, from prestigious research universities to small liberal arts colleges. In the final phase of its evaluation, the committee received enthusiastic cooperation from department chairs, administrators, colleagues, and current and former students of those nominated.

The Committee on Education and Teaching was most impressed that many of North's former students were inspired to continue their studies in economic history. Some were his graduate students and others were undergraduates who then went on to work in economic history at other institutions. Many of them became leaders in the field. One such student was Jonathan Hughes himself. In his essay on "Douglass North as a Teacher" (in Ransom, Sutch, and Walton, eds., Explorations in the New Economic History, 1982), Hughes offered the following appraisal of what was so distinctive about North's approach to teaching economic history:

'To have been in his seminar was a once-and-for-all experience, but also the beginning of a life long dialogue that disturbed the slower ones as well as the gifted. Even the least distinguished of his students can talk for hours, will if given the chance, about the seminar and how it influenced them. It was not a slick well-planned "course of study." North's interests changed, the subject matter changed, the arguments changed. The students who faced North-the-Marxist and those who faced North-the-reactionary worked with different intellectual materials. But the critical attitude was a constant, like the drive for focus and creativity.'

'He also handed his students a sense of fun and life. The last they do not forget. He always believed he was good, his ideas important, economic history an essential discipline. You were his student, so you were something in the world by right. The nice thing about his criticism of you was that he also was always willing to think that his adverse judgment of you might be wrong. Try it out, he dared you. So we did.'