ATHENS, Ohio -- Ohio University Distinguished Professor ofHistory John Lewis Gaddis has been elected as a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Gaddis, a diplomatic historian, is one of 38 persons elected this yearand the only Ohio historian that is currently a member of the academy,which is based in Cambridge, Mass.
Founded in 1780, the academy is a learned society with a dualfunction: to honor achievement in science, scholarship, the arts andpublic affairs, and to conduct a varied program of studies that reflectsthe interests of its members and is responsive to the needs andproblems of society and of the intellectual community. Its membershiptotals about 3,300 fellows and 550 Foreign Honorary Members.
Last month, Gaddis was named by the Woodrow WilsonInternational Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., as one of 31Wilson Fellows for the 1995-96 academic year. His fellowship projectwill be a biography of George F. Kennan, the principal architect ofU.S. containment policy during the Cold War.
Gaddis is author of the landmark The Long Peace: Inquiries into theHistory of the Cold War (1987). Other major publications include: TheUnited States and the Origin of the Cold War (1972); Strategies ofContainment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American NationalSecurity Policy (1982); and The United States and the End of the ColdWar: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations (1992).
A native of Texas, Gaddis received his Ph.D. from the University ofTexas at Austin in 1968 and has taught at Ohio University since 1969.He also has been Visiting Professor of American Studies at theUniversity of Helsinki (1980-81), Visiting Professor of Politics atPrinceton University (1987), Harmsworth Professor of AmericanHistory at Oxford University (1992-93), and the Council on ForeignRelation's 1994 Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow.