Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. 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
1. 1933 The Collegiate School
2. 1938 Harvard University - Society of Fellows, 1939-1942; he
never received a Ph.D.
3. War time service
4. 1942–1943 Office of War Information
5. 1943–1945 Office of Strategic Services
Educator
1. 1946-1961 professor of history at Harvard
2. Elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1961.
3. 1966 Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at City University
of New York Graduate Center - emeritus, 1994
Democratic
Activist
1. Among the founders of Americans for Democratic Action
2. Wrote speeches for Adlai Stevenson's two Presidential campaigns
in 1952 and 1956
3. Wrote speeches for John F. Kennedy's campaign in 1960
4. 1961-1964 Presidential special assistant for Latin American
affairs and speech writer
5. Wrote speeches for Robert Kennedy's campaign in 1968
6. 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).
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