Melyvn P. Leffler

Melvyn P. Leffler

E-mail: mpl4j@virginia.edu

Phone: 434-924-6422

Melvyn P. Leffler, Co-Chair of the Governing America in a Global Era Program, is Edward R. Stettinius professor in the Department of History at the University of Virginia. He served as the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at U.Va. from 1997–2001. In 1993 he won the Bancroft Prize for A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992). His other books include: Specter of Communism: The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1917–1953 (1994); The Elusive Quest: America's Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, 1919–1933 (1979); and most recently, For the Soul of Mankind: the United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (Hill and Wang, 2007). Leffler served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense during the Carter administration, where he worked on arms control and contingency planning as a fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in 1993, and is the author of several articles and essays seeking to put contemporary developments after 9/11 in historical perspective.