David F. Schmitz

David F. Schmitz is the Robert Allen Skotheim Chair of History and served as the Whitman College Chair of the Faculty for 2012-2015.  He is the author of The Transformation of Whitman College: From a Regional to a National Liberal Arts College, 1975-2015 (2022); The Sailor: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Transformation of American Foreign Policy (2021); Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War: The End of the American Century (2014); Brent Scowcroft: Internationalism and Post-Vietnam War American Foreign Policy (2011); The Triumph of Internationalism: Franklin D. Roosevelt and a World in Crisis, 1933-1941 (2007); The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1965-1989 (2006); The Tet Offensive: Politics, War, and Public Opinion (2005); Henry L. Stimson: The First Wise Man (2001); Thank God They're on Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921-1965 (1999); The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940 (1988); Architects of the American Century: Individuals and Institutions in Twentieth-Century U.S. Foreign Policymaking (edited with T. Christopher Jespersen, 2000); and Appeasement in Europe: A Reassessment of U.S. Policies (edited with Richard D. Challener, 1990). 

He is a specialist in 20^th century United States history and American foreign policy and taught courses on United States Foreign Policy, America in Vietnam, Twentieth Century U.S. History, and the History and Sociology of Rock 'n' Roll, the 1960s.  Professor Schmitz has received the Robert A. Fluno Award for Distinguished Teaching in Social Science, the G. Thomas Edwards Award for excellence in Teaching and Scholarship, Paul Garrett Fellowship, Burlington Northern Foundation Faculty Achievement Award, Arnold L. and Lois Graves Award in the Humanities, Pomona College, over a dozen Louis B. Perry Scholar Awards for faculty-student collaborative research, and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Foundation, and the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association.