U.Va. History Professor Named to Chair at Library of Congress

A University of Virginia professor has been named the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress’ John W. Kluge Center.

William I. Hitchcock, a professor in the Corcoran Department of History in the College of Arts & Sciences and a senior scholar at the Miller Center, has written widely on trans-Atlantic relations in the Cold War and European international affairs in the post-World War II era.

Hitchcock will spend six months at the Library of Congress continuing research for his book, “The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s.”

“Eisenhower was a dominant thinker and he had a remarkable strategic mind when it came to foreign policy and national-security issues,” Hitchcock said. “I want to get at how he believed America should deploy its power in the world to secure its interests and reveal something we didn’t know before about Eisenhower’s mind and his presidency.”

Hitchcock’s 2008 book, “The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe.” won the George Louis Beer Prize, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and was a Financial Times bestseller in the United Kingdom.

The Kissinger Chair is a senior research position in-residence at the library, assigned for a period of up to 10 months. The Librarian of Congress makes the annual appointment of the Kissinger scholar, based upon the recommendation of a selection committee consisting of representatives from the academic community and foreign policy experts.

The Library of Congress established the Kluge Center in 2000 with an endowment from the late John W. Kluge, also a U.Va. benefactor. Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution.

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