David Mayers

David Mayers holds a joint appointment in the History and Political Science Departments. His primary area of teaching/research interest is the history of US foreign relations/international politics. His principal books are George Kennan and the Dilemmas of US Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 1988), The Ambassadors and America’s Soviet Policy (Oxford University Press, 1995, Douglas Dillon prize from the American Academy of Diplomacy), Wars and Peace: The Future Americans Envisioned, 1861-1991 (St. Martin’s Press, 1998), Dissenting Voices in America’s Rise to Power (Cambridge University Press, 2007), FDR‘s Ambassadors and the Diplomacy of Crisis (Cambridge University Press, 2013), America and the Postwar World: Remaking International Society, 1945-1956 (Routledge, 2018). The tentative title of his book-in-progress is Seekers and Partisans: Americans Abroad Before Pearl Harbor, 1935-1941. Mayers’s most recent journal articles are “Crossing to Safety from Cold War America: The Collaboration and Friendship of John Paton Davies, Jr. and George Frost Kennan” (Diplomacy and Statecraft, June 2018), “The Lure of Ethiopia and the Saga of Colonel John Robinson, 1935-1937 (Journal of Transatlantic Studies, December 2019). Mayers served on the board of trustees of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Relations from 1999 to 2005. He has served as a member of the Management Committee, Transatlantic Studies Association. He chaired the Political Science Department from 2001 to 2007 and again in 2015-2018. He held a Berlin Prize (Haniel Fellow) at the American Academy in Berlin in 2008. Since 2013 he has been a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University.