Richard H. Immerman

RICHARD H. IMMERMAN (Ph.D., Boston College). Edward J. Buthusiem Family Distinguished Faculty Fellow and and Department Chair; Director of the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy. rimmerma@astro.temple.edu. Waging Peace Endnotes.

Research and Teaching Interests: Twentieth-Century United States; Diplomatic History.

Dwight David Eisenhower Personal Statement: My research focuses on the history of United States foreign relations, primarily but not exclusively since World War II. A significant proportion of my scholarship has concentrated on the presidential administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower. I have, for example, examined the overthrow of the Arbenz government in Guatemala, and I have written from a variety of perspectives on American policy toward Vietnam during the 1950s. Over time, however, my scholarship became less regionally oriented. With Robert Bowie, Eisenhower's assistant secretary of state for policy planning, I wrote Waging Peace, a study of the evolution of the New Look strategy. I completed a diplomatic biography, John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy. Of late I have returned to my earlier interests in the Central Intelligence Agency by writing a brief history of the "Company," and I am embarking on a project that examines the foreign policies of Jimmy Carter. While researching these projects, I developed particular interests in the process of decision-making and the president's relation with his advisors, the role of intelligence in the formulation of policy, and the application of psychological theory to international behavior. My graduate courses stress these interests, although I encourage students to investigate all aspects of U.S. foreign relations.

[publications] Representative Publications:

John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy (1999).

Co-author (with Robert R. Bowie), Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy (1998).

"'A Time in the Tide of Men's Affairs': Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam," in Warren Cohen and Nancy Tucker, eds., Lyndon Johnson Confronts the World: American Foreign Policy, 1963-1968 (1994).

Co-author (with Fred I. Greenstein), "What Did Eisenhower Tell Kennedy about Indochina? The Politics of Misperception," The Journal of American History (September 1992).

Editor, John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War: A Reappraisal (1990).

"Psychology," Journal of American History (1990).

"Confessions of an Eisenhower Revisionist: An Agonizing Reappraisal," Diplomatic History (1990).

Co-author (with George Herring), "Eisenhower, Dulles, and Dienbienphu: The 'Day We Didn't Go to War Revisited'," Journal of American History (1984).

The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (1982).

Professor Immerman was awarded the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations' Bernath Book Prize in 1983 and its Bernath Lecture Prize in 1990. He has received and SSRC/MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in International Peace and Security Studies (1987-1989) and grants from The International Research and Exchanges Board (1989), Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation (1991), and National Endowment for the Humanities (1995). In 1997-1998 he received the Temple University Paul W. Eberman Faculty Research Award. In 2004 Professor Immerman was named Temple University's Edward J. Buthusiem Family Distinguished Faculty Fellow.

Spring 2000

Office: 909 Gladfelter Hall
Office Hours: MWF, 10-11, W 7:30-8:30, and by appt.
E-mail: rimmerma@temple.edu

History Department Student Advisor/Ombudsperson

Course Materials

HIS 183 (formerly 256), The War in Vietnam (Fall 2000)
HIS 249, History of U.S. Foreign Relations after World War I (Fall 1997)
HIS 249, History of U.S. Foreign Relations after World War I (Fall 1999)
HIS 291, Superpower America (Fall 2001)
HIS 291, Superpower America (Fall 2002)
HIS 291, Superpower America (Fall 2003)
HIS 256, The War in Vietnam (Fall 1997)
HIS 183 (formerly 256), The War in Vietnam (Fall 2000)
HIS 461, Studies in. U.S. Diplomatic History (Fall 1997)
HIS 461, Studies in U.S. Diplomatic History (Fall 1998)
HIS 461, Studies in U.S. Diplomatic History (Spring 2000)
HIS 461 Studies in U.S. Diplomatic History(Spring 2002)
HIS 461 Studies in U.S. Diplomatic History (Spring 2004)
HIS 472, Studies in the Cold War (Spring 1999)
HIS 472, Studies in the Cold War (Spring 2001)
HIS 472, Studies in the Cold War (Spring 2003)
HIS 680, Seminar in International History (Spring 1998)
Big Ol' Bibliography (approx. 250K)

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