Central Mass. native Jill Lepore wins Pulitzer Prize in History Henry Schwan, Worcester Telegram & GazetteWed, May 6, 2026 at 9:45 PM UTC 0 Jill Lepore Jill Lepore, a native of Central Massachusetts and a Harvard professor, has won this year’s Pulitzer Prize in History. “I’m delighted. I hope people read the book,” said Lepore, reached by telephone on Wednesday, May 5. Lepore’s "We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution," published by Liveright Publishing Corp., won the top history prize in the Books, Drama and Music category.
Central Mass. native Jill Lepore wins Pulitzer Prize in History
Henry Schwan, Worcester Telegram & GazetteWed, May 6, 2026 at 9:45 PM UTC
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Jill Lepore
Jill Lepore, a native of Central Massachusetts and a Harvard professor, has won this year’s Pulitzer Prize in History.
“I’m delighted. I hope people read the book,” said Lepore, reached by telephone on Wednesday, May 5.
Lepore’s "We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution," published by Liveright Publishing Corp., won the top history prize in the Books, Drama and Music category.
A history professor at Harvard University and a law professor at Harvard Law School, the 59-year-old Lepore is also a staff writer at The New Yorker.
As one of this year’s Pulitzer recipients, Lepore will receive $15,000 and an invitation to a ceremonial dinner with this year's other Pulitzer winners to be held in October at Columbia University.
Lepore was born in Worcester, raised in West Boylston and is a 1984 graduate of Wachusett Regional High School.
She earned a bachelor's degree in English at Tufts University, a master's degree in American culture from the University of Michigan and a doctorate in American Studies at Yale University. Before Harvard, she taught at the University of California-San Diego and at Boston University.
Her late parents were public school teachers in West Boylston, and Lepore said they greatly influenced her life and career. “A lot of how I think and what I do as a professor is a continuation of the work my parents did.”
Some locals might remember her father, Francis, who wrote a “Frankly Speaking” column that started its run in 1978 in the West Boylston Banner and later in the Clinton Item.
Lepore recalls celebrating the country’s bicentennial when she was 9, a moment that reinforced her understanding of the significance that Central Massachusetts and the state played in the country's founding.
The impetus for "We the People" can be traced to Lepore’s 2018 New York Time Bestseller, "These Truths: A History of the United States." Lepore said some readers told her they “loved that book," especially the passages that helped them understand that the U.S. Constitution has been “frozen in time" because of its relatively few amendments.
Those amendments, or the lack thereof, are the focus of "We the People." More than 11,000 amendments have been proposed to the Constitution, but only 27 have been ratified since 1791.
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As Lepore sees it, the Constitution hasn’t been meaningfully amended since 1971 when the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18. “A Constitution that is no longer amended risks losing its legitimacy,” she said.
It’s natural to amend national governing documents to fit the times, said Lepore. Governments worldwide do it, but Lepore noted our Constitution has one of the lowest amendment rates in the world.
Saying she’s not a policymaker and isn’t advocating for amendments, Lepore explained the Constitution’s framers never anticipated a system of political parties that could be the death knell of our republic.
Instead, Article 5 of the Constitution provides two paths for amendments that Lepore described as "peaceful constitutional change."
“The framers of amendments understood that Article 5 is the most important feature,” said Lepore, because a peaceful process was necessary after a bloody Revolutionary War. Plus, the framers wanted to avoid future insurrections.
One path has been used for all 27 amendments to date. It requires a two-thirds vote in Congress, followed by ratification by three-quarters of the states.
The other path bypasses Congress. Two thirds of the states can call for a convention to propose amendments that would be sent back to the states. The final step is ratification by three-quarters of the states.
Lepore believes the polarization of our mainstream political parties since the 1970s has made it nearly impossible to push amendments through.
U.S. Supreme Court votes have resulted in constitutional changes. Plus, what Lepore called “presidential fiat” that, she said, is a fairly new way to amend the Constitution. Lepore sees dangers in both of those routes.
“Changes that way risk the separation of powers. The power to amend the Constitution is through the power of the people in Article 5. It's not Congress, it’s not the executive branch and it’s not the constitutional power of the Supreme Court.”
Contact Henry Schwan at henry.schwan@telegram.com. Follow him on X: @henrytelegram.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Central Mass. native Jill Lepore wins Pulitzer Prize in History
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