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- This article is about the Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. For his father and namesake (1888-1965), see Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr..
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. (b. October 15, 1917) is an American historian and social critic whose work has explored the liberalism of American political leaders including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy, as well as the men who surrounded Andrew Jackson. He served as Special Assistant to the President in John F. Kennedy's administration. He wrote a detailed account of the Kennedy Administration entitled "A Thousand Days."
He was born in Columbus, Ohio, the son of Arthur M. Schlesinger (1888-1965), who was an influential social historian at Ohio State and Harvard. His own son, Stephen Schlesinger is a social scientist well known for his work on the United Nations, and director of the World Policy Institute.
Schlesinger is a prolific contributor to liberal theory and is a passionate and articulate voice for Kennedy-style liberalism. He is admired for his wit, scholarship, and devotion to the liberal agenda before 1990. Since then he has been a critic of multiculturalism.
He coined the term "imperial presidency" during the Nixon administration.
Schlesinger's mother was a Bancroft and the family has long assumed (without hard evidence) that there is a blood connection to America's first great historian George Bancroft. (Schlesinger 2000, p 6-7) After using the middle initial "M" on a passport signature, he took it up.
Career
Education
- 1933 The Collegiate School
- 1938 Harvard University - Society of Fellows, 1939-1942; he never received a Ph.D.
War time service
- 1942–1943 Office of War Information
- 1943–1945 Office of Strategic Services
Educator
- 1946-1961 professor of history at Harvard
- Elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1961.
- 1966 Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at City University of New York Graduate Center - emeritus, 1994
Democratic Activist
- Among the founders of Americans for Democratic Action
- Wrote speeches for Adlai Stevenson's two Presidential campaigns in 1952 and 1956
- Wrote speeches for John F. Kennedy's campaign in 1960
- 1961-1964 Presidential special assistant for Latin American affairs and speech writer
- Wrote speeches for Robert Kennedy's campaign in 1968
- Since May 2005 he's been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post.
Writings
He won a Pulitzer Prize in history for his 1945 book The Age of Jackson.
His 1949 book The Vital Center made a case for the New Deal policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, while harshly critical of both unregulated capitalism and of those liberals who advocated cooperation or sympathy with communism.
His 1986 book The Cycles of American History was an early work on cycles in politics in the United States; it was influenced by his father's work on cycles.
He became a leading opponent of multiculturalism in the 1980s; The Disuniting of America (1991).
Works
- 1939 Orestes A. Brownson: A Pilgrim's Progress
- 1945 The Age of Jackson
- 1949 The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom
- 1950 What About Communism?
- 1951 The General and the President, and the Future of American Foreign Policy
- 1957 The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919-1933 (The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. I)
- 1958 The Coming of the New Deal: 1933-1935 (The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. II)
- 1960 The Politics of Upheaval: 1935-1936 (The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. III)
- 1960 Kennedy or Nixon: Does It Make Any Difference?
- 1963 The Politics of Hope
- 1963 Paths of American Thought (ed. with Morton White)
- 1965 A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
- 1965 The MacArthur Controversey and American Foreign Policy
- 1967 Bitter Heritage: Vietnam and American Democracy, 1941-1966
- 1967 Congress and the Presidency: Their Role in Modern Times
- 1968 Violence: America in the Sixties
- 1969 The Crisis of Confidence: Ideas, Power, and Violence in America
- 1970 The Origins of the Cold War
- 1973 The Imperial Presidency
- 1978 Robert Kennedy and His Times
- 1983 Creativity in Statecraft
- 1986 Cycles of American History
- 1988 JFK Remembered
- 1988 War and the Constitution: Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt
- 1990 Is the Cold War Over?
- 1991 The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society
- 2000 A Life in the 20th Century, Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950
- 2004 War and the American Presidency
Awards
- 1946 Pulitzer Prize for History - The Age of Jackson
- 1965 National Book Award for A Thousand Days
- 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Biography - A Thousand Days
- 1979 National Book Award for Robert Kennedy and His Times
- 1998 National Humanities Medal
- 2003 Four Freedoms Award
Quote
If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.
References
- Daniel Feller, "Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.," in Robert Allen Rutland, ed. Clio's Favorites: Leading Historians of the United States, 1945-2000 U of Missouri Press. (2000) pp 156-169.
- Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.; A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917–1950 (2000), autobiography, vol 1.
External links
- Hilton Kramer was critical of Schlesinger from the right in a 2001 essay *
- Noam Chomsky was critical of Schlesinger from the left in a 1967 article, The Responsibility of Intellectuals.
1917 births | American World War II veterans | Harvard University alumni | Harvard University faculty | Historians of the United States | Members of The American Academy of Arts and Letters | Living people | People from Ohio | Pulitzer Prize winners | Arthur M. Schlesinger | Arthur Schlesinger
"Arthur Schlesinger, Jr."