John Nef: Honored by U. of Chicago

The Committee on Social Thought, a center of interdisciplinary research at the University of Chicago since 1941, often is associated with such eminent former members as Hannah Arendt, Saul Bellow, Allan Bloom, J.M. Coetzee, T.S. Eliot, Friederich Hayek, Edward Levi and Mark Strand. Now, new recognition is coming to John Nef, the late historian who was the driving force behind the committee's founding and its steadfast financial backer.

U. of C. said it is naming the committee after Nef in gratitude for nearly $9 million in cumulative gifts made by him and his widow, Evelyn Stefansson Nef. She continued to support the committee after her husband died in 1988.