Josiah Bunting III Elected Chairman of The English-Speaking Union of the United States

NEW YORK - June 12, 2013 - PRLog -- Josiah Bunting III was elected Chairman of The English-Speaking Union of the United States at a meeting of its Board of Directors on June 11.  His two-year term of office began immediately.  Mr. Bunting was selected to lead the English-Speaking Union of the United States for his experience as a scholar, educator, military officer, college president, author and speaker on education and Western culture.

Following graduation from the Virginia Military Institute, Mr. Bunting studied Modern British History at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.  He served in the US Army in the 82nd Airborne Division, in Vietnam and at the Military Academy at West Point, where he taught British History.  His teaching posts and professorships also include the Naval War College, Princeton University and VMI.  He has served as Head Master at the Lawrenceville School, President of Briarcliff and Hampden-Sydney Colleges and Superintendent of his alma mater, VMI, where he oversaw its transition to a co-ed institution.  Mr. Bunting served as a director of the National Endowment for the Humanities, from 2004 to 2009; as a Director of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation since 1986 and its President since 2004; as President of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s National Civic Literacy Board; and as President of the Lerhman American Studies Center.  Mr. Bunting has authored several novels including The Lionheads, cited by TIME as one of the best novels of the year, and a biography of Ulysses S. Grant.  He is completing a biography of George Marshall for Knopf.  He was principal curator for the “Grant and Lee in the Civil War” exhibit at the New-York Historical Society and lectures and publishes articles on leadership for them periodically.  He established the Wye Faculty Seminars that assist professors to relate their teaching to broad issues of citizenship in the American polity and beyond.

Mr. Bunting assumed the Chairmanship of the English-Speaking Union upon the resignation of former congresswoman and educator Patricia Scott Schroeder, J.D. who had served as Chair of the ESU since 2009.  Prior Chairmen of The English-Speaking Union of the United States have included President of the United States Dwight D.Eisenhower; Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr.; Attorney General George W. Wickersham; Supreme Allied Commander in Europe General Alfred M. Gruenther; Security and Exchange Commission Chairman J. Sinclair Armstrong; former President of Yale and US Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s Kingman Brewster; as well as and six other ambassadors to the UK, one to Canada and one to Turkey.

The English-Speaking Union of the United States is a non-profit, non-political educational organization that celebrates English as a shared language to foster global understanding and good will by providing educational and cultural opportunities for students, educators, and members.  Founded in 1920, the ESU is a 501(c)(3) charitable educational organization headquartered in New York City with some 6,000 members nationwide.  An independent American corporation, the ESU carries out its work through a network of 70 U.S. Branches, sponsoring a variety of language and international education programs including scholarships, teacher education and conversational English tutoring.  It also conducts book and cultural exchanges working in fellowship with the 57 independent ESUs around the world.  Most prominent of ESU programs is The English-Speaking Union National Shakespeare Competition, a school-based program to develop students’ speaking and critical thinking skills, through ESU Branch-sponsored community competitions and at the National Competition at Lincoln Center in New York City.  Inaugurated in 1983, the program has engaged more than 250,000 young people.  To learn more about the English-Speaking Union, Click Here

Assuming the Chairmanship of the English-Speaking Union of the United States, Mr. Bunting said, “I'm humbled and honored to join with our volunteers in the service of a legacy and a mission as vital in 2013 as it was at the founding of The English Speaking Union almost a century ago.  The aim then was to strengthen and celebrate the bonds of common cultural and linguistic heritage, bonds tested in the stern arbitrament of war.  Almost a century later we strive to make that heritage, in its riches of culture, literature, language, and the arts, a heritage to be shared with all others, towards a common understanding of the aspirations of all nations and peoples.”

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