David Kennedy

American Historian, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author, Professor of History Emeritus at Stanford University
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  • David M. Kennedy is an accomplished historian, author, and educator who has received many awards for his teaching and scholarship
  • Has served in numerous leadership roles in academia and beyond
  • Author of several influential books that cover a wide range of topics in American history, from women's rights to World War I and the Great Depression
  • Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2000 for Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War

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DAVID M. KENNEDY, the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Emeritus, and founder and former Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University, is a native of Seattle and a 1963 Stanford graduate. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1968. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1967.

Professor Kennedy has long taught both undergraduate and graduate courses in the history of the twentieth-century United States, American political and social thought, American foreign policy, American literature, the comparative development of democracy in Europe and America, and the history of the North American West.  Graduating seniors have four times elected him as Class Day speaker. In 1988 he received the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching, and in 2005 the Hoagland Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.  He has also received the Stanford Alumni Association's Richard W. Lyman Award for faculty service, and the Organization of American Historian’s Distinguished Service Award. In 2008 the Yale University Graduate School presented him with its highest honor, the Wilbur Cross Medal.

Reflecting his interdisciplinary training in American Studies, which combined the fields of history, literature, and economics, Professor Kennedy's scholarship is notable for its integration of economic and cultural analysis with social and political history, and for its engagement with the question of America’s national character. His 1970 book, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, embraced the medical, legal, political, and religious dimensions of the subject and helped to pioneer the emerging field of women's history.  Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980) used the history of American involvement in World War I to analyze the American political system, economy, and culture in the early twentieth century. Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (1999) recounts the history of the American people in the two great crises of the Great Depression and World War II. With Thomas A. Bailey and Lizabeth Cohen, Kennedy is also the co-author of a textbook in American history, The American Pageant, now in its seventeenth edition.

Birth Control in America was honored with the John Gilmary Shea Prize in 1970 and the Bancroft Prize in 1971. Over Here was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1981. Freedom From Fear was a Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and the History Book Club, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and winner of the Pulitzer and Francis Parkman Prizes, as well as the English-Speaking Union’s Ambassador’s Prize, and the Commonwealth Club of California’s California Book Award Gold Medal, all in 2000.

In 1976-77, Professor Kennedy served as Visiting Professor at the Facoltá di Scienze Politiche (Istituto Cesare Alfieri), Universitá di Firenze, Italia, where he taught a year-long course (in Italian) on the history of American political thought.  He has lectured on American history throughout Italy, as well as in Germany, Turkey, Finland, Denmark, Canada, Britain, Australia, Russia, China, and Ireland. He has served as chair of the Stanford History Department, and as director of Stanford's Program in International Relations, as well as Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences. He has served on the Advisory Board for the Public Broadcasting System's "The American Experience" and has chaired the Test Development Committee for the Educational Testing Service's Advanced Placement Program in American History. He has also served as a director of the CORO Foundation, and as chair of the Board of Directors of the Stanford University Bookstore. He has served for nearly four decades on the board of Environmental Traveling Companions (ETC), a service organization for people with disabilities. In 1995-96, he was the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University. He is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as the American Philosophical Society. In 2002 he joined the Board of the Pulitzer Prizes (chair, 2010-2011), in 2008 the Board of the New York Historical Society, and in 2013 the Board of the California Academy of Sciences.  Since 2000, he has served as the Editor of the Oxford History of the United States. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in 2015 appointed Kennedy to the Advisory Council for the Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail, which will run from Glacier National Park in Montana to the Pacific shore in Washington State. In 2018 PBS released “American Creed,” a film he made jointly with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

Professor Kennedy has been married for 53 years to the former Judith Ann Osborne. They have three children and seven grandchildren. In his free time he can be found fly-fishing, biking, back-packing, river-rafting, sea-kayaking, flying, or mountain-climbing somewhere in the American West.

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Speaker Video

Not your daddy's military | David Kennedy | TEDxStanford

Leaders for All Seasons? The Elements of Leadership

A discussion of the relation between “task leadership” and “process leadership,” as seen in the different examples of Dwight Eisenhower’s record as WWII Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, and as President of the United States in the Civil Rights era.

How the West was Won, and What it Has to Lose

A second “westward movement” set in motion by WWII has utterly transformed the western United States, now home to more than one in three Americans, the source of more than two-thirds of America’s GDP, and a heavy majority of exports to Asia. How this came to be, and what challenges the future holds for the region, are the subjects of this presentation.

The Southern Border Crisis: Immigration Then and Now

Measuring today’s agonizing debate over immigration, especially the chronic problems at the southern border, against the historical experience of America as a “nation of immigrants.”

Does the United States Have a Mercenary Army?

Based on personal observations at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, as well as extensive research, an exploration of the challenges facing the All-Volunteer Force we have had since 1973.

The Legacies of Franklin Roosevelt

A critical overview of the ways in which the Great Depression and the New Deal forever altered the landscape of American society, as evidenced through a biography of the twentieth century’s most charismatic, controversial, and consequential president, FDR.

A Tale of Three Cities: How the United States Won WWII

American Grand Strategy in the greatest war of all time – by way of explaining how it came to be, as Winston Churchill declared in 1945, that “The United States stand at this moment at the summit of the world.”

Depressions Great and Otherwise

The causes and consequences of the biggest “Black Swan” of them all, the Great Depression of the 1930s, compared with later crises including 2008-09, and….?

A Most Peculiar Institution: The American Presidency

The Framers who wrote the Constitution invented a new political office, an elected federal executive. This lecture focuses on the  history of the presidency, touching on the unique institution of the Electoral College and the crucially important relationship between the president and the media. 

Polarization Past and Polarization Future

Americans have in fact been more polarized than they are at present, and the nation lived through it. Can it survive this divisive passage of our own time?

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The Modern American Military