Paul Langdon Ward

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Paul Langdon Ward (February 4, 1911 – November 13, 2005) was an American scholar and administrator who served as the fifth president of Sarah Lawrence College from 1960 to 1965.

Born in Diyarbakir in the Ottoman Empire, Ward was the son of a medical missionary and spent much of his childhood in Lebanon, where he attended the American Community School. He earned a BA from Amherst College in 1933, an MA from Harvard in 1934, and a PhD in history from Harvard in 1940.

He began his career teaching history at Russell Sage College (1941–42) and then worked for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services during World War II. After the war, he went to China as a missionary of the Protestant Episcopal Church and taught at Huachung University in Wuhan (1946–1950).

Back in the United States, Ward taught at Colby College (1951–53) and at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (1953–60), where he was chairman of the History Department. In 1960 he became president of Sarah Lawrence College, a position he held until 1965.

After leaving Sarah Lawrence, Ward led the American Historical Association (1965–1974). He also served on Nelson Rockefeller's Commission on the Higher Education of Women and was active in the Episcopal Peace Fellowship and the peace work of the Episcopal Church.

In 1988, Ward and his wife Catharine received the John Nevin Sayre Award from the Episcopal Church for their peace work. He served on the board of the Harry S. Truman Library Institute, was a fellow of the Society for Religion in Higher Education, and received honorary doctorates from Amherst College, Bard College and Clark University.

Ward wrote several books, including William Lambarde's Collections on Chancery (1953), A Style of History for Beginners (1959), Confrontation and Learned Societies (with John Voss, 1970), Elements of Historical Thinking (1971), Studying History: An Introduction to Methods and Structure (1985), and The Voice of Conscience: A Loud and Unusual Noise? The Episcopal Peace Fellowship, 1939–1989 (with Nathaniel W. Pierce, 1989).