Cambridge, MA -- Two leading historians of international relations will be joining the faculty of Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) in the 2015-16 academic year. HKS Dean David T. Ellwood has announced that Fredrik Logevall has been named the Laurence D. Belfer Professor and Arne Westad has been named the S.T. Lee Professor of U.S.-Asia Relations.
“Fred Logevall and Arne Westad are renowned historians whose scholarship has helped us understand how we have arrived at the present moment in international relations and global affairs. Citizens and policy makers frequently utilize analogies from the past to grapple with the dilemmas they currently face. Fred and Arne will help our students and faculty become more effective by making our historical analyses more rigorous," said Archon Fung, Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship and Academic Dean at HKS. "We are proud to welcome them both to HKS."
Fredrik Logevall is a specialist on U.S. foreign relations who has also been named professor of history at Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). He currently serves on the faculty at Cornell University, where he serves as vice provost for international affairs and as director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Logevall writes and teaches about the international history of the Cold War and the Vietnam War. His most recent book, "Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam" (Random House, 2012), received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for History and the 2013 Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians. His other recent works include "A People and A Nation: A History of the United States," 9th ed. (co-authored, with Mary Beth Norton et al.; Cengage, 2011) and "America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity” (co-authored with Campbell Craig; Harvard University Press, 2009). He is immediate past president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR).
Logevall earned a BA in political science from Simon Fraser University, an MA in history from the University of Oregon and a PhD in history from Yale University.
Arne Westad is School Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and an expert on the history of Eastern Asia and the Cold War era. He was the founding director of LSE IDEAS, the LSE's centre for international affairs, diplomacy and strategy. Westad served as general editor of the three-volume "Cambridge History of the Cold War." His 2005 book, "The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times," received the Bancroft Prize and his most recent book, “Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750,” won the Asia Society Book Award in 2013. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2011.
Westad studied history, philosophy and modern languages at the University of Oslo and received his PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.