Foundation, where he spent two years as a visiting professor of history at Vassar College before he became executive director of the new Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, which was conceived as an American outpost of the Polska Akademia Umiejętności. Bronisław Malinowski was its first president, and Halecki became its president from 1952 to 1964. Halecki became a professor of Eastern European history at Fordham University from 1944 to 1961, and he was also affiliated with the University of Montreal from 1944 to 1951 and an adjunct professor at Columbia University from 1955 to 1961, where he contributed to the prestige of Columbia's Institute on East Central Europe. After his "retirement" in 1961, he was a visiting professor at Loyola University in Rome (1962–1963), University of Fribourg (1963), University of California at Los Angeles (1963–1964), and Good Counsel College (1964–1967). As a historian, Halecki was an expert on the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which laid the foundation for his thesis that Eastern Europe, distinct from Russia was no less European than Western Europe and that they were both part of one great European community of people that shared the same spiritual ideals and cultural traditions. His work led to the gradual acceptance of the concept and name of East Central Europe. His magnum opus was a two-volume history of the Jagiellonian Union, published in 1919–1920. Much of his retirement was occupied with working on a biography of Jadwiga of Anjou that was published two decades after his death. Halecki also served on the controversial "Committee of Ten" in Scarsdale, New York, which claimed communist influence in the public school curriculum in the 1950s. Among the many students he mentored were Thaddeus V. Gromada, Taras Hunczak, and Eugene Kusielewicz. Halecki was married to Helen de Sulima-Szarlowska, who died in 1964. Honors and recognition Halecki received honorary doctorates from the University of Lyon, the University of Montreal, De Paul University, Fordham University, and Saint Peter's College. He was Papal Chamberlain and Knight of the Grand Cross, Order of Malta; Commander of the Order of Polonia Restituta; Commander of Saint Gregory; Commander, Hungarian Croix de Merite; and Chevalier, Légion d'honneur. Halecki received the Polish American Historical Association's first Haiman Award (1966) for outstanding contributions to Polish American studies. In 1981, the Polish American Historical Association established the Halecki Prize, given to recognize an important book or monograph on the Polish experience in