Liberty Medal Ceremony 2017

October 16, 2017

Dr. Amy Gutmann joined former Vice President Joseph R. Biden in honoring Sen. John McCain with the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal on October 16, which honors “men and women of courage and conviction who have strived to secure the blessings of liberty to people the world over.”

Gutmann, who chairs the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal Committee, was among the featured speakers at the event.

“The man we honor tonight exemplifies our society’s highest ideals,“ said Gutmann. “By virtue of both his ideals and his actions, he not only crosses party lines and national borders, he transcends them. He is an exemplary American who routinely forgoes what is expedient in order to pursue what is just and right.”

In his remarks, Biden, who is also the Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor at Penn, where he leads the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, drew upon the decades-long friendship that he and McCain shared as fellow senators and occasional rivals.

“What you don’t really understand in my humble opinion is how much courage you give the rest of us in looking at you. It matters,” said Biden.

McCain is the 29th recipient of the annual award. “I am the luckiest guy on earth,” he said. “I have served America’s cause – the cause of our security and the security of our friends, the cause of freedom and equal justice – all my adult life. I haven’t always served it well. I haven’t even always appreciated what I was serving.”

He added later in his remarks that America "will not thrive in a world where our leadership and ideals are absent. We wouldn’t deserve to.”

Past Liberty Medal recipients have included U.S. Rep. John Lewis, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, General Colin Powell, the education advocate Malala Yousafzai and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Photographs courtesy of the National Constitution Center.