| 1 | Name: | Dr. David M. Kennedy | |
| Institution: | Stanford University | ||
| Year Elected: | 2001 | ||
| Class: | 3. Social Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 303. History Since 1715 | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1941 | ||
David M. Kennedy, the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History Emeritus 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 courses on 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, and in 1988 he was presented with the Dean's Award for distinguished Teaching. He has also received the Stanford Alumni Associations' Richard W. Lyman Award for faculty service and the Hoagland Prize for Excellence in undergraduate teaching, as well as the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal from the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. 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. 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. Kennedy is also the co-author of a textbook in American History, The American Pageant, now in its eighteenth edition. Birth Control in America was honored with both 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. Professor Kennedy has been a visiting professor at the University of Florence, Italy, and has lectured on American history in Italy, Germany, Turkey, Scandinavia, Canada, Britain, Australia, Ireland, Russia, and China. In 1995-96, he was the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University. He delivered the Tanner Lectures at Oxford in 2003. He has served as chair of the Stanford History Department, as director of Stanford's Program in International Relations, as founding director of Stanford’s Bill Lane Center for the American West, and 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 on the Board of the Pulitzer Prizes and the California Academy of Sciences. He is also on the Board of Environmental Traveling Companions, a service organization for the handicapped. In 2015 Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack appointed him to the Advisory Council for the Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail. He is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences as well as the American Philosophical Society. | |||