Katharine Cornell Chair is Established at Hebrew University

Katharine Cornell, American actress, received the 1959 “Woman of the Year” Award of the Women’s Division of the American Friends of the Hebrew University today at the seventh annual luncheon of the organization, held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

Creation of the Katharine Cornell Chair in Comparative Literature at the School of Fine Arts of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was announced by Mrs. Louis S. Gimbel, Jr., national chairman of the Women’s Division. Philip M. Klutznick, president of the American Friends of the Hebrew University, described his as “an assurance of further cultural inter-action between the people of Israel and ourselves.”

Mr. Klutznick said the Katharine Cornell Chair “is ideally suited to the geography of Israel and to the historic role which Israel is now performing as a cultural bridge between the Orient and the Occident. Situated at the crossroads of three continents, with a population drawn from every part of the earth, Israel is proving that ‘the twain shall meet.’ The Hebrew University of Jerusalem affords perhaps the best–and surely the most inspiring–demonstration of this process.”

Other speakers at the event Sir Cedric Hardwicke and John Shubert, who represented the theater world; Mrs. Abraham F. Wechsler, New York State chairman of the Women’s Division; and Mrs. John Shuber, the luncheon chairman. All paid tribute to Miss Cornell.