The Medal of Freedom was established in 1963 by President John Kennedy. It is awarded to people who make substantial contributions to world peace, national interest and/or security, or cultural endeavors. Here is a list of the 2012 honorees (and their accomplishments as written by CNN):
Madeleine Albright
From 1997 to 2001, under President Bill Clinton, Albright served as the 64th United States secretary of state, the first woman to hold that position. During her tenure, she worked to enlarge NATO and helped lead the alliance's campaign against terror and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, pursued peace in the Middle East and Africa, sought to reduce the dangerous spread of nuclear weapons and was a champion of democracy, human rights and good governance across the globe.
John Doar
Doar was a legendary public servant and leader of federal efforts to protect and enforce civil rights during the 1960s. He served as assistant attorney general in charge of the civil rights division of the Department of Justice. In that capacity, he was instrumental during many major civil rights crises, including singlehandedly preventing a riot in Jackson, Mississippi, after the funeral of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963.
Bob Dylan
One of the most influential American musicians of the 20th century, Dylan released his first album in 1962. Known for his rich and poetic lyrics, his work had considerable influence on the civil rights movement of the 1960s and has had significant impact on American culture over the past five decades.
William Foege
A physician and epidemiologist, Foege helped lead the successful campaign to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. He was appointed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1977 and, with colleagues, founded the Task Force for Child Survival in 1984. Foege became executive director of The Carter Center in 1986 and continues to serve the organization as a senior fellow.
John Glenn
Glenn is a former United States Marine Corps pilot, astronaut, and United States senator. In 1962, he was the third American in space and the first American to orbit the Earth. After retiring from the Marine Corps, Glenn was elected to the U.S. Senate in Ohio in 1974. He was an architect and sponsor of the 1978 Nonproliferation Act and served as chairman of the Senate Government Affairs committee from 1978 until 1995.
Gordon Hirabayashi
Hirabayashi openly defied the forced relocation and internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. As an undergraduate at the University of Washington, he refused the order to report for evacuation to an internment camp, instead turning himself in to the FBI to assert his belief that these practices were racially discriminatory. Consequently, he was convicted by a U.S. Federal District Court in Seattle of defying the exclusion order and violating curfew. Hirabayashi appealed his conviction all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against him in 1943. After World War II and his time in prison, Hirabayashi obtained his doctoral degree in sociology and became a professor. In 1987, his conviction was overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Hirabayashi died on January 2, 2012.
Dolores Huerta
Huerta is a civil rights, workers and women's advocate. With Cesar Chavez, she co-founded the National Farmworkers Association in 1962, which later became the United Farm Workers of America. Huerta has served as a community activist and a political organizer, and was influential in securing the passage of California's Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, and disability insurance for farm workers in California.
Jan Karski
Karski served as an officer in the Polish Underground during World War II and carried among the first eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to the world. He worked as a courier, entering the Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi Izbica transit camp, where he saw firsthand the atrocities occurring under Nazi occupation.
Juliette Gordon Low
Born in 1860, Low founded the Girl Scouts in 1912. The organization strives to teach girls self-reliance and resourcefulness. It also encourages girls to seek fulfillment in the professional world and to become active citizens in their communities.
Toni Morrison
One of our nation's most celebrated novelists, Morrison is renowned for works such as "Song of Solomon," "Jazz" and "Beloved", for which she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988. When she became the first African-American woman to win a Nobel Prize in 1993, Morrison's citation captured her as an author "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality."
Shimon Peres
An ardent advocate for Israel's security and for peace, Shimon Peres was elected the ninth president of Israel in 2007. First elected to the Knesset in 1959, he has served in a variety of positions throughout the Israeli government, including in 12 Cabinets as foreign minister, minister of defense, and minister of transport and communications. Peres served as prime minister from 1984-1986 and 1995-1996.
John Paul Stevens
Stevens served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1975 to 2010, when he retired as the third longest-serving justice in the court's history. Known for his independent, pragmatic and rigorous approach to judging, Stevens and his work have left a lasting imprint on the law in areas such as civil rights, the First Amendment, the death penalty, administrative law and the separation of powers.
Pat Summitt
In addition to accomplishing an outstanding career as the all-time winningest leader among all NCAA basketball coaches, Summitt has taken the University of Tennessee to more Final Four appearances than any other coach and has the second best record of NCAA championships in basketball.
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