Center for the American Idea - Speakers

Josiah Bunting III became president of The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation June 1, 2004.  For the preceding eight years, he had served as superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia.

Bunting is a graduate of VMI (1963) and later studied at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and at Columbia where he was a John Burgess Fellow.  From 1966 until 1972 he served on active duty in the Regular Army, attaining the rank of Major.  He served with the Ninth Infantry Division in Vietnam, and as an assistant professor of history at West Point.

He served successively as professor of history at the Naval War College, and as president of Briarcliff College (1973-1977) and Hampden Sydney College (1977-1987).  Before taking his appointment at VMI, he was headmaster of the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey.
His publications include four novels, a biography of Ulysses Grant, and a life of George C. Marshall to be published by Knopf this year.  Mr. Bunting’s first novel, The Lionheads, was selected as one of the “Ten Best Novels of 1973" by Time Magazine; his novel about an ideal college – An Education for Our Time – was a main selection of the Conservative Book Club in 1998.

Mr. Bunting is a member of the UNESCO Commission and of the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington. He also serves as chairman of the National Civic Literacy Board at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.  Since 2007 he has served, as well, as president of ISI’s Lehrman American Studies Center.