Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. | |
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 Schlesinger in 1961 | |
| Born | Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger (1917-10-15)October 15, 1917 Columbus, Ohio, U.S. |
| Died | February 28, 2007(2007-02-28) (aged 89) New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation | Historian, writer |
| Alma mater | Harvard University (AB) Peterhouse, Cambridge |
| Period | 1939–2007 |
| Subject | Politics, social issues, history |
| Literary movement | American liberal theory |
| Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize (1946, 1966) National Humanities Medal (1998) |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 5 |
Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. (/ˈʃlɛsɪndʒər/SHLESS-in-jər; bornArthur Bancroft Schlesinger; October 15, 1917 – February 28, 2007) was an Americanhistorian,social critic, andpublic intellectual. The son of the influential historianArthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a specialist inAmerican history, much of Schlesinger's work explored the history of 20th-centuryAmerican liberalism. In particular, his work focused on leaders such asHarry S. Truman,Franklin D. Roosevelt,John F. Kennedy, andRobert F. Kennedy. In the 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns, he was a primary speechwriter and adviser to the Democratic presidential nominee,Adlai Stevenson II.[2] Schlesinger served as special assistant and "court historian"[3] to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963. He wrote a detailed account of the Kennedy administration, from the 1960 presidential campaign to the president's state funeral, titledA Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, which won the 1966Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
In 1968, Schlesinger actively supported the presidential campaign of SenatorRobert F. Kennedy, which ended withKennedy's assassination in Los Angeles. Schlesinger wrote a popular biography,Robert Kennedy and His Times, several years later. He later popularized the term "imperial presidency" during theNixon administration in his 1973 book,The Imperial Presidency.
Schlesinger was born inColumbus, Ohio, the son ofElizabeth Harriet (née Bancroft) andArthur M. Schlesinger (1888–1965), who was an influential social historian atOhio State University andHarvard University, where he directed many PhD dissertations in American history.[4] His paternal grandfather was aPrussianJew who converted toProtestantism and then married an Austrian Catholic.[5] His mother, aMayflower descendant, was ofGerman andNew England ancestry, as well as a relative of historianGeorge Bancroft, according to family tradition.[6] Schlesinger practicedUnitarianism.[7]
Schlesinger attended thePhillips Exeter Academy inNew Hampshire and received his undergraduate degree at the age of 20 fromHarvard College, where he graduatedsumma cum laude in 1938.[8] After spending the 1938–1939 academic year atPeterhouse, Cambridge, as aHenry Fellow, he was appointed to a three-year Junior Fellowship in theHarvard Society of Fellows in the fall of 1939.[9] At the time, Fellows were not allowed to pursue advanced degrees, "a requirement intended to keep them off the standard academic treadmill"; as such, Schlesinger would never earn a doctorate.[8] His fellowship was interrupted by the United States enteringWorld War II. After failing his military medical examination, Schlesinger joined theOffice of War Information. From 1943 to 1945, he served as an intelligence analyst in theOffice of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to theCIA.[10]
Schlesinger's service in the OSS allowed him time to complete his firstPulitzer Prize–winning book,[11]The Age of Jackson, in 1945.[12] From 1946 to 1954, he was an associate professor at Harvard,[13] becoming a full professor in 1954.[14]
In 1947, Schlesinger, together with former First LadyEleanor Roosevelt; Minneapolis Mayor and futureSenator and Vice PresidentHubert Humphrey; economist and longtime friendJohn Kenneth Galbraith; and Protestant theologianReinhold Niebuhr[15] foundedAmericans for Democratic Action. Schlesinger acted as the ADA's national chairman from 1953 to 1954.[13]
After PresidentHarry S. Truman announced he would not run for a second full term in the1952 presidential election, Schlesinger became the primary speechwriter for and an ardent supporter ofGovernor Adlai E. Stevenson ofIllinois. In the1956 election, Schlesinger, along with 30-year-old Robert F. Kennedy, again worked on Stevenson's campaign staff.[13] Schlesinger supported the nomination of Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy as Stevenson's vice-presidential running mate, but at theDemocratic National Convention, Kennedy came second in the vice-presidential balloting, losing to SenatorEstes Kefauver ofTennessee.
Schlesinger had known John F. Kennedy since attending Harvard and increasingly socialized with Kennedy and his wifeJacqueline in the 1950s. In 1954,The Boston Post publisher John Fox Jr. planned a series of newspaper pieces labeling several Harvard figures, including Schlesinger, asreds; Kennedy intervened in Schlesinger's behalf, which Schlesinger recounted inA Thousand Days.
During the1960 campaign, Schlesinger supported Kennedy, causing consternation to Stevenson loyalists. Kennedy campaigned actively but Stevenson refused to run unless he was drafted atthe convention. After Kennedy won the nomination, Schlesinger helped the campaign as a sometime speechwriter,[13] speaker, and member of the ADA. He also wrote the bookKennedy or Nixon: Does It Make Any Difference? in which he lauded Kennedy's abilities and scorned Vice PresidentRichard M. Nixon as having "no ideas, only methods.... He cares about winning."[16]
After the election, the president-elect offered Schlesinger an ambassadorship and Assistant Secretary of State for Cultural Relations before Robert Kennedy proposed that Schlesinger serve as a "sort of roving reporter and troubleshooter." Schlesinger quickly accepted, and on January 30, 1961, he resigned from Harvard and was appointed Special Assistant to the President. He worked primarily on Latin American affairs and as a speechwriter during his tenure in theWhite House.
In February 1961, Schlesinger was first told of the "Cuba operation," which would eventually become theBay of Pigs Invasion. He opposed the plan in a memorandum to the president: "at one stroke you would dissipate all the extraordinary good will which has been rising toward the new Administration through the world. It would fix a malevolent image of the new Administration in the minds of millions."[17] He, however, suggested:
Would it not be possible to induceCastro to take offensive action first? He has already launched expeditions againstPanama and against theDominican Republic. One can conceive ablack operation in, say,Haiti which might in time lure Castro into sending a few boatloads of men on to a Haitian beach in what could be portrayed as an effort to overthrow the Haitian regime. If only Castro could be induced to commit an offensive act, then the moral issue would be butted, and the anti-US campaign would be hobbled from the start.[18]
During the Cabinet deliberations, he "shrank into a chair at the far end of the table and listened in silence" as theJoint Chiefs and CIA representatives lobbied the president for an invasion. Along with his friend, SenatorWilliam Fulbright, Schlesinger sent several memos to the president opposing the strike;[19] however, during the meetings, he held back his opinion, reluctant to undermine the President's desire for a unanimous decision. Following the overt failure of the invasion, Schlesinger later lamented, "In the months after the Bay of Pigs, I bitterly reproached myself for having kept so silent during those crucial discussions in the cabinet room. ... I can only explain my failure to do more than raise a few timid questions by reporting that one's impulse to blow the whistle on this nonsense was simply undone by the circumstances of the discussion."[20] After the furor died down, Kennedy joked that Schlesinger "wrote me a memorandum that will look pretty good when he gets around to writing his book on my administration. Only he better not publish that memorandum while I'm still alive!"[17] During theCuban Missile Crisis, Schlesinger was not a member of the executive committee of the National Security Council (EXCOMM) but helpedUN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson draft his presentation of the crisis to theUN Security Council.
In October 1962, Schlesinger became afraid of "a tremendous advantage", which "all-out Soviet commitment tocybernetics" would provide the Soviets.[21] Schlesinger further warned that "by 1970 the USSR may have a radically new production technology, involving total enterprises or complexes of industries, managed by closed-loop, feedback control employingself-teaching computers". The cause was a pre-vision of analgorithmic governance of economy by an internet-like computer network authored by Soviet scientists, particularlyAlexander Kharkevich.[22][23]
After President Kennedy wasassassinated on November 22, 1963, Schlesinger resigned his position in January 1964. He wrote a memoir/history of the Kennedy administration,A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, which won him his secondPulitzer Prize in 1966.[24]
Schlesinger returned to teaching in 1966 as the Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities at theCUNY Graduate Center. After his retirement from teaching in 1994, he remained an active member of the Graduate Center community as an emeritus professor until his death.[25]
Schlesinger was a very good friend ofKatharine Graham, publisher atThe Washington Post and when she died in 2001, he gave one of the eulogies at her funeral atWashington National Cathedral.[26]
After his service for the Kennedy administration, he continued to be a Kennedy loyalist for the rest of his life, campaigning for Robert Kennedy's tragicpresidential campaign in 1968 and for SenatorEdward M. Kennedy in 1980. At the request of Robert Kennedy's widow,Ethel Kennedy, he wrote the biographyRobert Kennedy and His Times, which was published in 1978.[27]
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he criticized Richard Nixon as a candidate and as president.[28][29] His prominent status as a liberal Democrat and outspoken disdain of Nixon led to his placement on themaster list of Nixon's political opponents.[30] Ironically, Nixon would become his next-door neighbor in the years following theWatergate scandal.
After retiring from teaching, he remained involved in politics through his books and public speaking tours. Schlesinger was a critic of the Clinton Administration, resisting President Clinton's cooptation of his "Vital Center" concept in an article forSlate in 1997.[31] Schlesinger was also a critic of the 2003Iraq War, calling it a misadventure. He blamed the media for not covering a reasoned case against the war.[32]
Schlesinger's name at birth was Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger; since his mid-teens, he had instead used the signatureArthur M. Schlesinger Jr.[33] He had five children, four from his first marriage to author and artistMarian Cannon Schlesinger and a son and stepson from his second marriage to Alexandra Emmet, also an artist:[34]
On February 28, 2007, Schlesinger had aheart attack while dining with family at a steakhouse inManhattan. He was taken toNew York Downtown Hospital, where he died at the age of 89. HisNew York Times obituary described him as a "historian of power."[8] He is buried inMount Auburn Cemetery inCambridge, Massachusetts.[36]
He won aPulitzer Prize for History in 1946 for his bookThe Age of Jackson, covering the intellectual environment ofJacksonian democracy.
His 1949 bookThe Vital Center made a case for theNew Deal policies ofFranklin D. Roosevelt and was harshly critical of bothunregulated capitalism and of those liberals such asHenry A. Wallace who advocated coexistence withcommunism.
In his bookThe Politics of Hope (1962), Schlesinger terms conservatives the "party of the past" and liberals "the party of hope" and calls for overcoming the division between both parties.[37]
He won a second Pulitzer in the Biography category in 1966 forA Thousand Days.
His 1986 bookThe Cycles of American History, a collection of essays and articles, contains "The Cycles of American Politics," an early work on the topic; it was influenced by his father's work on cycles.
He became a leading opponent ofmulticulturalism in the 1980s and articulated this stance in his bookThe Disuniting of America (1991).
Published posthumously in 2007,Journals 1952–2000 is the 894-page distillation of 6,000 pages of Schlesinger diaries on a wide variety of subjects, edited by Andrew and Stephen Schlesinger.[38]
This is a partial listing of Schlesinger's published works:
Besides writing biographies he also wrote a foreword to a book onVladimir Putin which came out in 2003 under the same name and was published byChelsea House Publishers.[40]
Schlesinger's papers will be available at theNew York Public Library.[41]
Reinhold Niebuhr was one of the great intellectual influences on Schlesinger, and to the extent that Schlesinger possessed a foreign policy vision, it reflected the cautious realism and greater humility that Niebuhr wanted superpower America to reflect.
Pulitzer Prize forHistory (1926–1950) | ||
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Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography (1951–1975) | ||
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