Dr. Melvyn P. Leffler, a 2004-2005 senior fellow, will provide an assessment of the legacy of George Kennan, one of the most influential foreign service officers in U.S. history, who, as second in command in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow at the end of World War II and later as director of the U.S. State Department's Policy Planning staff, authored and implemented the "containment policy" that shaped U.S. diplomacy throughout the Cold War.

Dr. Leffler is Edward R. Stettinius professor in the Department of History at the University of Virginia (UVA). He has served as chairman of the Department of History and dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at UVA. He was the Harmsworth professor at the University of Oxford in 2002–03. An expert on the Cold War, Leffler was a fellow and public policy scholar at the Wilson Center, a senior fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Leffler won the Bancroft Prize from Columbia University in 1993 for distinguished works in American history and diplomacy, the Hoover Prize in 1993 for the best book on twentieth-century U.S. history, the Ferrell Prize for the best book on U.S. foreign relations, and in 1992 was one of six finalists for the Gelber Prize for the best book in English on international relations. He received a Ph.D. from Ohio State University.

Speakers

• Dr. Melvyn P. Leffler
  Senior Fellow | U.S. Institute of Peace

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