UNH Today

Lucy Salyer, UNH professor of history, has been selected as the 2022 recipient of the Gary Lindberg Award in the College of Liberal Arts (COLA), according to an announcement today by Michele Dillon, dean of COLA. The highest honor in the college, this award is given annually to one outstanding teacher-scholar.

Salyer earned a Ph.D. in jurisprudence and social policy at the University of California Berkley’s School of Law in 1989 and joined the UNH history faculty that same year. She specializes in American legal history and the Progressive Era, focusing on race, ethnicity and immigration. She teaches a wide range of courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and has mentored scores of students in her 33 years at UNH.

“Professor Salyer’s students give glowing reviews,” Dillon said in her announcement. “Her department colleagues say students ‘have flocked to her’ because of her devotion to their success and careful guidance.”

Salyer is the author of two award-winning books, “Under the Starry Flag: How a Band of Irish Americans Joined the Fenian Revolt and Sparked a Crisis in Citizenship,” which won the Myrna Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and “Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law,” which won the Theodore Saloutos Memorial Award from the Immigration and Ethnic History Society. Her scholarship has been recognized with grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies, among others.

Active as a public intellectual on flashpoint issues of immigration and citizenship, Salyer has organized webinars and teach-ins, consulted on and moderated public dialogues, contributed to an amicus brief for a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and conducted media and documentary film interviews.

“Professor Salyer truly exemplifies the relentless spirit of rigorous intellectual inquiry idealized in the teacher-scholar model,” says Dillon. “She brings her impressive, wide-ranging skills and dedication to all aspects of her work, including her public commitment to illuminating urgent historical-legal questions with remarkable lucidity. We are honored to have Dr. Salyer as a colleague.”

The annual Gary Lindberg Award was established by the College of Liberal Arts in 1986 in memory of Professor Gary Lindberg of the Department of English. Lindberg was an exceptional scholar and outstanding teacher whose dedication and service to the University of New Hampshire as well as the wider community exemplified the highest academic standards and ideals.