Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

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Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. bigraphy, stories - American historian

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. : biography

October 15, 1917 – February 28, 2007

Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. (born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger; October 15, 1917 – February 28, 2007) was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. A specialist in American history, much of Schlesinger’s work explored the history of 20th-century American liberalism. In particular, his work focused on leaders such as Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Schlesinger served as special assistant and "court historian" to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963. He wrote a detailed account of the Kennedy Administration, from the transition period to the president’s state funeral, titled A Thousand Days.

In 1968, Schlesinger actively supported the presidential campaign of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, which ended with Kennedy’s assassination in Los Angeles. Schlesinger wrote the popular biography Robert Kennedy and His Times several years later. He later popularized the term "imperial presidency" during the Nixon administration book of the same name. He was also the son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr.

Later career

Schlesinger returned to teaching in 1966 as the Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York. He retired in 1994, but remained an active member of the Graduate Center community as an emeritus professor until his death. He continued to be a Kennedy loyalist for the rest of his life, campaigning for Robert Kennedy’s tragic presidential campaign in 1968 and for Senator Edward M. Kennedy in 1980. Upon the request of Robert Kennedy’s widow, Ethel Kennedy, he wrote the biography Robert Kennedy And His Times.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he greatly criticized Richard Nixon as both a candidate and president. His outspoken disdain of Nixon and prominent status as a liberal Democrat led to his placement on the master list of Nixon’s political opponents. Ironically, Nixon would become his next-door neighbor in the years following the Watergate scandal. He retired from teaching in 1994 but remained involved in politics for the rest of his life through his books and public speaking tours.

Schlesinger was a critic of the 2003 Iraq War, calling it a misadventure. He put much blame on the media for not covering a reasoned case against the war.

Early life and career

Schlesinger was born in Columbus, Ohio, the son of Elizabeth Harriet (née Bancroft) and Arthur M. Schlesinger (1888–1965), who was an influential social historian at Ohio State University and Harvard University. His paternal grandfather was a Prussian Jew (who later converted to the German Reformed Church) and his paternal grandmother an Austrian Catholic. His mother, a Mayflower descendant, was of German and New England ancestry, and a relative of historian George Bancroft, according to family tradition. His family practiced Unitarianism.

Schlesinger attended the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and received his first degree at the age of 20 from Harvard College, where he graduated summa cum laude (with highest honor) in 1938. In 1940, at the age of 23, he was appointed to a three-year fellowship at Harvard. His fellowship was interrupted by the United States’ entry into World War II. After failing his military medical examination, Schlesinger joined the Office of War Information. From 1943 to 1945 he served as an intelligence analyst in the Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the CIA. Schlesinger Robert, , US News and World Report, August 20, 2008

Schlesinger’s service in the OSS allowed him time to complete his first Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Age of Jackson, in 1945. From 1946 to 1954 he was an Associate Professor at Harvard, becoming a full professor in 1954. He never took a PhD.

Political activities prior to 1960

In 1947 Schlesinger, together with former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Minneapolis mayor and future Senator and Vice President Hubert Humphrey and economist and longtime friend John Kenneth Galbraith founded Americans for Democratic Action. Schlesinger acted as the ADA’s national chairman from 1953 to 1954.