The nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.
Obama: “President Kennedy once said that a nation reveals itself not only by the men and women it produces but also by the men and women that it honors—the people that it remembers. When you look at the men and women who received the Medal of Freedom, it says something about who we are as a people.”
Focus on America 