Sheldon Hackney

Educator and chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities who organized a series of “national conversations” aimed at restoring civility and civic-mindedness during the culturally fractious 1990s. Mr. Hackney had been president of the University of Pennsylvania from 1981 to 1993 when President Bill Clinton appointed him chairman of the endowment. The son of Cecil Fain Hackney and the former Elizabeth Morris. he completed his master’s degree and Ph.D. in history at Yale, where he was a protégé of C. Vann Woodward, considered the dean of Southern historians. Mr. Hackney was an assistant professor and then a tenured professor of history at Princeton from 1965 until 1972, when he became provost there. From 1975 to 1980 he was president of Tulane University in New Orleans. He returned to teaching at Penn after leaving the endowment. Besides his wife, he is survived by a son, Fain Hackney; a daughter, Elizabeth McBride; three brothers, Morris, Rob and John; and eight grandchildren. A daughter, Virginia, died several years ago.