Walter LaFeber

LaFeber was born in Walkerton, Indiana, a town of around 2,000 people in the northern part of the state, outside South Bend, on August 30, 1933. His father, Ralph Nichols LaFeber, owned a local grocery store; his mother, Helen (Liedecker), was a housewife. LaFeber worked at his father's store from age eight through the end of college. He graduated high school in 1951. LaFeber played varsity basketball for the Hanover Panthers, as a reserve forward during his sophomore year. He also played some during his junior year. He sang in the Hanover College Choir, which provided voices for Sunday morning Presbyterian services and also gave concerts around the state, was co-chair of a "Religion in Life" Week program at the college, and was on the Hanover Board of Student Affairs, which directed extracurricular affairs on campus. He belonged to the Beta Theta Pi social fraternity, the Alpha Phi Gamma national honor society for journalism, and Hanover's own Gamma Sigma Pi honor society for academic performance. He received his BA from there in 1955. Contrary to some later accounts, LaFeber has said he got along well with Bailey. At the time LaFeber was not dissatisfied with U.S. foreign policy, having supported the presidential candidacies of Robert A. Taft in 1952 and Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956. At this point LaFeber went to the University of Wisconsin. The study of history at Wisconsin had a heritage going back to the time of Frederick Jackson Turner, and the intellectual atmosphere at the school encouraged people to think differently. After Harrington moved into university administration, he replaced himself with William Appleman Williams, for whom LaFeber and fellow students Lloyd C. Gardner and Thomas J. McCormick became teaching assistants and with whom they would strike up a close bond (the four of them would become the core of what became known as the Wisconsin School of diplomatic history). LaFeber was also influenced at Wisconsin by Philip D. Curtin, who developed LaFeber's interest in the British Empire, as well as by the early American scholar Merrill Jensen and the intellectual historian Merle Curti. During his dissertation research at the Library of Congress, LaFeber found himself at the same table as historian Ernest R. May of Harvard, with both working on the same period but with very different interpretations of it. The more established May helpfully supplied LaFeber with documents he had found, which LaFeber took as an object lesson on how two fair-minded scholars can reach differing conclusions from the same sources. With his dissertation titled "The Latin American Policy of the Second Cleveland Administration" being accepted, LaFeber received his PhD from Wisconsin in 1959. ==Scholarship==

Cornell University hired LaFeber as an assistant professor in 1959. The work established LaFeber as a prominent scholar, Historian Irwin Unger, writing in 1967, did not find much to like of Williams or the Wisconsin School overall, but did praise LaFeber as the best of them, a "sophisticated and urbane historian" who was "not a crude polemicist". Unger found it particularly notable that LaFeber did not vilify the people he identified as being behind much of American foreign policy. Indeed, in the preface to The New Empire, LaFeber writes: Finally, I must add that I have been profoundly impressed with the statesmen of these decades. ... I found both the policy makers and the businessmen of this era to be responsible, conscientious men who accepted the economic and social realities of their day, understood domestic and foreign problems, debated issues vigorously, and especially were unafraid to strike out on new and uncharted paths in order to create what they sincerely hoped would be a better nation and a better world. All this, however, is not to deny that the decisions of these men resulted in many unfortunate consequences for their twentieth-century descendants. LaFeber's publication did meet with some criticism. One later accounting of the Wisconsin School notes that in The New Empire, "LaFeber's arguments were sometimes questionable or overdrawn, and he acknowledged that he had passed by episodes that did not fit his pattern." LaFeber's next work, America, Russia and the Cold War, 1945-1966 (1967), would end up going through ten editions (the last, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2006, in 2006), a rarity for a book that is not explicitly a textbook. Fremont-Smith praised LaFeber's work for being a "penetrating account" that was especially strong in sorting out the chronology of events and tracing the impact of domestic politics in each of the countries involved. The relationship between the scholarship of LaFeber and William Appleman Williams has been characterized by one later historiographic survey this way: "Williams' best-known student, who has surpassed the master in the quantity and quality of his historical output while continuing to promote the line of interpretation laid down by Williams, is Walter LaFeber." However, not all have agreed; a broadside against Cold War revisionists was published by historian Robert H. Ferrell in 2006, who criticized their reliance on a monocausal theory. In particular he charged LaFeber with overusing the papers of Bernard Baruch, whom Ferrell said lacked real influence in determining American foreign policy. LaFeber's later scholarly works received praise within academic and other circles. His 1978 work, The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective, has been attributed with influence over elite opinion regarding the history of Panama–United States relations and with helping the United States Senate decide to ratify the Panama Canal Treaty. A revised edition in 1990 was critical of U.S. policy since then. Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (1984, revised 1992) received the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award; The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad Since 1750 (1989, revised 1994) encompasses some of what was in LaFeber's famous course. In The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations Throughout History (1997), LaFeber turned toward East Asia, surveying the breadth of the American engagement and conflict with Japan from the nineteenth century through the 1990s. While a New York Times review called it a "dense chronological account...not for the fainthearted," The Clash received both the prestigious Bancroft Prize in American History and the Ellis W. Hawley Prize of the Organization of American Historians. ==Teaching==

LaFeber became the first recipient of the Clark Distinguished Teaching Award at Cornell in 1966; the award was created to honor junior faculty members who were involved in the teaching of undergraduates. He attained the rank of full professor in 1967, then was named to the Marie Underhill Noll Professor of History chair in 1968. The History 314 page shown is for the first lecture of the semester and shows LaFeber's brief outline at the start. LaFeber's undergraduate History of American Foreign Relations class achieved a reputation as one of the toughest and most popular courses on campus. This was especially so during the turbulent times of the Vietnam War, when students were seeking answers for why their country was involved in that conflict and in other foreign interventions. Even students who never took the course or went to a lecture were aware of its existence and renown. LaFeber, who was known for being "old school" in his appearance and demeanor, always wearing a coat and tie to class, was lauded by Cornell's in-house newspaper for his simplistic approach to presentation, He spoke softly for whatever room he was in, so as to force students to be absolutely quiet in order to hear him. Cornell president Dale R. Corson later explained the reason: "It was the bicentennial. I felt that something significant should be said by someone who could say it with authority." LaFeber switched to half-time teaching in 1989, In another prominent occasion, Cornell president Hunter Rawlings chose LaFeber to give a commemoration address on the Arts Quadrangle following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Prominent former students of LaFeber in areas outside academia have included: U.S. Representative Thomas Downey, U.S. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, and Undersecretary of Defense and U.S. Ambassador Eric S. Edelman; LaFeber's influential students were found working for both parties in Washington and had a diversity of viewpoints. Indeed, LaFeber has said, "I didn't try to instill anything in anybody. I've never cared about having disciples. [Another professor] did, but he was very convinced he was right. I'm often not." Alterman has said, "To me, Walter represents the ur-notion of what it means to be a disinterested scholar. There's a willingness to follow the scholarship wherever it leads, even if it's in politically inconvenient directions." ==Academic positions and honors==

By early 1966 LaFeber was publicly critical of U.S. strategy in the Vietnam War, saying that the country's policy reflected "the dilemma of American liberalism" with policy objectives that were contradictory and paradoxical. In general, LaFeber was in sympathy with many of the student causes of the 1960s, including opposition to the war, the quest for racial justice, and the desire for a political system that better represented democratic ideals. But the occupation of Willard Straight Hall by African American students, who eventually became armed, as well as some other physical and verbal threats made against university officials and faculty at the time, greatly dismayed him. Following the actions on campus, in which the university president, James Alfred Perkins, agreed to some of the students' demands as they departed the Straight, LaFeber resigned his position as chair of the history department. On a trip to New York City with a few other professors to meet with university trustees, LaFeber marshalled the arguments against the actions of Perkins. In 1971, LaFeber was named to the American Historical Association's seat on the Department of State Historical Advisory Committee, as part of an effort to give revisionist historians a voice during the selection and production of the important Foreign Relations of the United States book series. LaFeber became chair of that committee by 1974, He gave titled lectures at many universities, LaFeber was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. LaFeber served as president in 1999 of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. LaFeber's career as a scholar, teacher, and public figure was celebrated with a Festschrift-like issue in the journal Diplomatic History in 2004. The editor-in-chief of the journal wrote in an introductory note that "Professor LaFeber has been a commanding presence in the field of the history of American foreign relations for more than four decades." ==Later life==

LaFeber retired in 2006 after 46 years on the Cornell faculty. His farewell lecture on April 25, 2006, billed as "A Special Evening With Cornell's Walter LaFeber: A Half-Century of Friends, Foreign Policy, and Great Losers" was given to a nearly 3,000-person, capacity gathering of former students, Cornell alumni, and colleagues at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. (The event had been moved from the originally scheduled American Museum of Natural History venue due to overwhelming demand for tickets. In 2013, LaFeber was given an American Historical Association's 2013 Award for Scholarly Distinction, a lifetime achievement award for what the association said was for being "one of the scholars who re-invented the study of American foreign relations in the 1960s: not only transforming many specific debates, but lastingly changing our sense of what this field could be. ... An exceptionally visible and valuable public intellectual, Professor LaFeber has managed to reach broad audiences without sacrificing academic rigor." The influence of LaFeber was again a topic in 2016 at Zankel Hall in New York City, when he and several prominent students discussed the influence of Cornell on American diplomacy. LaFeber died on March 9, 2021, at an assisted living facility in Ithaca, New York. He was 87. Later that month, Cornell created the Walter F. LaFeber Professor seat, based on a gift from Andrew H. Tisch (who had audited LaFeber's course as an undergraduate in 1970–71). Thomas B. Pepinsky was named the inaugural holder of the professorship. ==Works==

Sources: ;Books • The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860–1898 (Cornell University Press, 1963; 35th anniv. ed., 1998) • John Quincy Adams and American Continental Empire: Letters, Papers and Speeches (Quadrangle Books, 1965) [editor] • America, Russia and the Cold War, 1945–1966 (John Wiley & Sons, 1967; succ. eds. longer timespan, concluding 10th ed. 1945–2006, McGraw-Hill, 2006) • America in the Cold War: Twenty Years of Revolution and Response, 1947–1967 (John Wiley & Sons, 1967) [editor] • The Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (John Wiley & Sons, 1971) [editor] • Creation of the American Empire: U.S. Diplomatic History (Rand McNally, 1973; rev. ed. 1976, also available in two volumes) [co-author with Lloyd C. Gardner and Thomas J. McCormick] • The American Century: A History of the United States Since the 1890s (John Wiley & Sons, 1975; succ. eds., concluding 7th ed. M. E. Sharpe, 2013, also available in two volumes) [co-author with Richard Polenberg, later editions add co-author Nancy Woloch) • America in Vietnam: A Documentary History (Doubleday, 1985) [co-editor with William Appleman Williams, Thomas McCormick, and Lloyd Gardner] • The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective (Oxford University Press, 1978; upd. ed., 1990) • Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (W. W. Norton & Co., 1983; 2nd. ed., 1993) • The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad since 1750 (W. W. Norton & Co., 1989; 2nd ed. 1994, also available in two volumes) • Behind the Throne: Servants of Power to Imperial Presidents, 1898–1968 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1993) [co-editor with Thomas J. McCormick] • The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913 (Cambridge University Press, 1993), Volume II of The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations (rev. ed. 2013, Volume II of The New Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations) • The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations Throughout History (W. W. Norton & Co., 1997); excerpt; also see online review by Jon Davidann • Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism (W. W. Norton & Co., 1999; exp. ed., 2002) • The Deadly Bet: LBJ, Vietnam, and the 1968 Election (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005) ;Selected articles and chapters • "United States Depression Diplomacy and the Brazilian Revolution, 1893–1894", The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 40, No. 1 (February 1960) • "A Note on the 'Mercantilistic Imperialism' of Alfred Thayer Mahan", Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 48, No. 4 (March 1962) • "The Third Cold War: Kissinger Years and Carter Years" (Charles Edmondson Historical Lectures, 1979–1980; Baylor University Press) • "Liberty and Power: U.S. Diplomatic History, 1750-1945" in Eric Foner, ed., The New American History (Temple University Press, 1990) • "The Post September 11 Debate over Empire, Globalization, and Fragmentation", Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 117, No. 1 (Spring, 2002) • "Some Perspectives in U.S. Foreign Relations", Diplomatic History, Vol. 31, No. 3 (June 2007) • ==References==