Tom’s first guest today is Dr. Carla Hayden. She was named the 14th Librarian of Congress in 2016 by then-President Barack Obama. Prior to her nomination, she led Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library for 23 years. In July, she was appointed as a senior fellow at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Dr. Hayden was one of the first casualties of the Trump Administration’s reworking of the leadership of cultural institutions, the military, and agencies throughout the government. The President fired Dr. Hayden without explanation in May, five months after he took office.
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The 73 year-old Dr. Hayden was the first African American and the first woman to serve as the Librarian of Congress. President Trump also fired, in the first few months of his term and without explanation, Gwynne Wilcox, the first Black woman on the National Labor Relations Board, and Gen. C.Q. Brown, Jr. the second African American to chair the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Dr. Hayden is being honored by the Pratt on Friday night, where she will be presented with an award named after her, in recognition of her long career in public service. She will receive the Carla D. Hayden Award for Distinguished Public Service at the Mr. Pratt Presents Gala on Friday, October 3, where she will be in conversation with the businessman and philanthropist David Rubenstein.
