 The Edward J. Buthusiem Family Distinguished Faculty Fellow in History
Marvin Wachman Director of the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy (CENFAD). Director of the Center for the Humanities at Temple (CHAT).
In January 2007 Professor Immerman began his tenure as president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.
Beginning September 2007 Professor Immerman will be on leave from Temple, serving as Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analytical Integrity and Standards.
Research and Teaching Interests: History of U.S. Foreign Relations; International History; History of Intelligence
Waging Peace Endnotes.
Personal Statement: A historian 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 research 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. Not long thereafter I published 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 an completing a project that examines the growth and contours of the American Empire by analyses of the beliefs and behavior of six contributors: Benjamin Franklin, John Quincy Adams, William Henry Seward, Henry Cabot Lodge, John Foster Dulles, and Paul Wolfowitz. I have tentative entitled this book Empire for Liberty? I also edit the "Post-Cold War" chapter of the Society of Historians of America Foreign Relations' American Foreign Relations Since 1600: A Guide to the Literature and, with my colleague Petra Goedde, will co-edit the Oxford Companion to the Cold War.
Always a believer that individuals and their personalities matter in history, in the course of my research I developed particular interests in the process of decision-making and the president's relations 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. At the graduate level normally I teach sequentially Studies in Diplomatic History (History 461), which examines the period from the Revolution through the conclusion of the Second World War, and Studies in the History of the Cold War (History 471). My undergraduate courses focus on U.S. foreign policy since 1941 and the Vietnam War, although I often teach about America's Rise to Globalism as well.
Representative Publications:
The Central Intelligence Agency: Security Under Scrutiny (co-editor and contributor with Athan Theoharis, et.al., 2006).
“Foreign Policy in the 1950s,” in Robert D. Schulzinger, ed., A Companion to American Foreign Relations (2003).
 John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy (1999).
"Effective National Security Advising: Recovering the Eisenhower Legacy," Political Science Quarterly (Co-author with Fred i. Greenstein, 2000).
Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy (Co-author with Robert R. Bowie,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). 
"What Did Eisenhower Tell Kennedy about Indochina? The Politics of Misperception," The Journal of American History (Co-author with Fred I. Greenstein, 1992).
Editor, John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War: A Reappraisal (1990).
"Psychology," Journal of American History (1990). I revised this article for publication in Michael J.
Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson, eds., Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations (rev. ed., 2004).
"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).
"Eisenhower and Dulles: Who Made the Decisions?" Political Psychology (1979)
- 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 Temple's College of Liberal Arts named Professor Immerman the Edward J. Buthusiem Family Distinguished Faculty Fellow in History. After chairing the Department of History for more than seven years, in 2006 he became the Director of the Center for the Humanities at Temple (CHAT). He was appointed the Marvin Wachman Director of the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy in January 2007. In September 2007 he begins his tenure as Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analytical Integrity and Standards.
Spring 2007
Office: 1008 Gladfelter Hall
Courses: Studies in the Cold War
Office Hours: MT 9:00-11:00 AM, and by appointment
E-mail: rimmerma@temple.edu
Curriculum Vitae
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