Richard Immerman

Richard H. Immerman

Role: Executive Director, SHAFR

Education: Ph.D., Boston College; M.A., Boston College; B.A., Cornell University

Email: [email protected]

Biography

Even as Richard Immerman’s career took him to Princeton University to the University of Colorado to the University of Hawaii to Temple University, he called SHAFR home. A Life Member now serving as Executive Director, he has probably attended 40 annual SHAFR meetings. He has also served as SHAFR's President, twice on Council, and on more committees than he can recall. Immerman has authored or edited more than a dozen books and published some 50 book chapters, essays, and articles in such journals as Political Science Quarterly, the Journal of American History, Intelligence and National Security, and most notably, Diplomatic History. A historian of the U.S. foreign relations and intelligence history who directed Temple's Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy (CENFAD) for twenty-five years, he has served as an Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence, the Francis Deserio Chair in Strategic and Theater Intelligence (US Army War College), the Stanley Kaplan Distinguished Chair in Foreign Policy (Williams College), the chair of the Historical Advisory Committee to the US Department of State, the chair of SHAFR’s Historical Advisory Committee, and the chair of the AHA’s Committee on Relations with the National Archives and Records Administration. Immerman has made a mockery of his retirement from Temple in 2017.

Publications

  • Thinking Otherwise: How Walter LaFeber Explained the History of U.S. Foreign Relations (co-edited with Susan Brewer and Doug Little, Cornell University Press, 2024)
  • The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War (co-edited with Petra Goedde, Oxford University Press, 2013)
  • The Hidden Hand: A Brief History of the CIA (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)
  • Empire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowitz (Princeton University Press, 2010)
  • John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999)
  • Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy (co-authored with Robert Bowie, Oxford University Press, 1998)
  • The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (University of Texas Press, 1982)

Awards & Honors

  • 2024 Norman and Laura Graebner Lifetime Achievement Award
  • 2019 Peter Hahn Award for Distinguished Service Award
  • 1989 Bernath Lecture Prize
  • 1983 Bernath Book Prize