Born in
Murfreesboro, Tennessee, he served as an artillery battery commander in
World War I. He attended
Vanderbilt University, where he was a member of the group of poets and literary scholars known as the
Fugitives. As a
Rhodes Scholar, he attended
Balliol College, Oxford, where he read
Philosophy, Politics and Economics and, among others, would meet the poet
William Butler Yeats, the Indian nationalist
Krishna Menon, and
John Marshall Harlan II, a future
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. His dissertation,
The Pragmatic Revolt in Politics, completed under supervision of
A. D. Lindsay, proved to be influential. He was hired by Harvard President
Abbott Lawrence Lowell, and he was to remain at
Harvard for the next 41 years. He became an advisor to a number of American presidents and presidential candidates, including
Al Smith in 1928. He was a member of
Franklin Roosevelt's
Brain Trust in the 1930s and the 1940s and the Vice President of the
War Production Board in Charge of Civilian Requirements during
World War II. He also accompanied Roosevelt to the
Yalta Conference. After the war, Elliott served on the
National Security Council. He was a
scriptwriter for
Republican Richard Nixon's 1960 election run, but
Democratic Presidents
John F. Kennedy and
Lyndon Johnson retained him as a
US State Department advisor. He also taught at the
Harvard Extension School. Elliott became dean of the
Harvard Summer School, where he would establish the Harvard International Seminar, directed by his student and protégé
Henry Kissinger. Many attendees went on to become heads of state or government in their respective countries, including
Yigal Allon in
Israel,
Yasuhiro Nakasone in
Japan, and
Pierre Trudeau in
Canada. One of his sons,
Ward Elliott, was a notable political scientist. Other sons include the late Charles Elliott and David Elliott, both political scientists. ==Influence==