Walter A. McDougall

Walter A. McDougall is the Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He has directed the university’s International Relations Program since 1988.

The recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1986, McDougall was named to the Insight list of the top 10 professors in the United States in 1987. He received the Dexter Prize for History of Technology in 1986, was a finalist for the American Book Award for Non-Fiction in 1985 and in 1984 was on the Esquire Register of “Men and Women Under 40 Who are Changing America.”

McDougall holds a bachelor of arts degree from Amherst college and both a master of arts degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He was a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a fellow at the Smithsonian Institution’s Wilson Center and National Air and Space Museum, and received an Earhart Foundation Fellowship. McDougall is presently a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and serves as editor of Orbis, A Journal of World Affairs.

Prior to taking his present position, McDougall was a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, serving as assistant professor 1975-83, associate professor 1983-87 and professor 1987-88. His teaching fields have included European diplomatic history since 1763, U.S. diplomatic history since 1776, Asia/Pacific international relations, technology and international relations, and modern European history.

The author of the Encyclopedia Britannica’s section devoted to International Relations in the 20th Century McDougall has written five books, including Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since 1776 (1997); Let the Sea Make a Noise: A History of the North Pacific from Magellan to MacArthur (1993); The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (1985); The Granada Papers (1984) and France’s Rhineland Diplomacy, 1914-1924: The Last Bid for a Balance of Power in Europe. He has also published numerous columns, articles, book reviews and essays in newspapers and scholarly journals. He has presented many invited lectures and addresses at professional and educational events.

McDougall and his wife, the former Jonna VanZanten, have two children and reside in Philadelphia. His interests include books, music from Bach to Bob Dylan, chess, baseball, bridge, golf and C.S. Lewis.