Ted Widmer is a former Senior Fellow and Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. He is a distinguished visiting scholar and director of the Humanities Lab at the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York.
Previously, Widmer was the director of John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. Prior to that he was the director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, and the founding director of the C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College.
Between 1997 and 2001, Widmer was a foreign policy speechwriter and senior adviser to President Clinton. He also served in the Department of State during the Obama administration, as a senior adviser to Secretary Clinton.
Prior to that, Widmer taught at Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D., AM, and AB degrees.
His books include Listening In: The Secret White House Tapes of John F. Kennedy (2012); Martin Van Buren (2005); Campaigns: A Century of Presidential Races (with Alan Brinkley, 2001); and Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City (1999). Widmer also edited the two volumes of American Speeches: Political Oratory from Abraham Lincoln to Bill Clinton published by the Library of America (2006).
Widmer is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, The New Yorker, Politico, The Boston Globe, and The American Scholar.
Featured Work
MAY 17, 2019 • Podcast
Civic Responsibility in the Internet Age, with Michael H. Posner
Historian Ted Widmer and Michael Posner, an NYU Stern professor and former U.S. State Department official, discuss local politics, journalism, and money in elections ...
MAY 15, 2019 • Podcast
The Crack-Up: The Amritsar Massacre & India's Independence Movement, with Gyan Prakash
Princeton's Gyan Prakash tells the tragic story of the Amritsar Massacre in 1919, in which a British general ordered his soldiers to shoot at thousands of ...
MAY 14, 2019 • Podcast
100 Years After Versailles
Just weeks after an armistice halted the most devastating conflict in generations, the victors of the Great War set out to negotiate the terms of ...
APR 8, 2019 • Podcast
The Crack-Up: Winston Churchill & the Geopolitics of 1919, with Andrew Roberts
In this episode of the Crack-Up series on 1919, Andrew Roberts, author of "Churchill: Walking with Destiny," examines how Churchill dealt with the complicated problems facing ...
MAR 26, 2019 • Podcast
The Crack-Up: Egypt & the Wilsonian Moment, with Erez Manela
For about 18 months after World War I there was what historian Erez Manela calls the "Wilsonian moment"--a brief period when President Woodrow Wilson led ...
MAR 14, 2019 • Transcript
The Crack-Up: 1919 & the Birth of Modern Korea, with Kyung Moon Hwang
Could the shared historical memory of March 1 ever be a source of unity between North Koreans and South Koreans? In this fascinating episode of The ...
MAR 5, 2019 • Podcast
Challenges to American Democracy, with Michael Waldman
"We're all really proud of our system. It's the world's oldest democracy, and we've always had to fight to make it real," says Michael Waldman ...
FEB 22, 2019 • Podcast
The Crack-Up: Jazz Arrives, Loudly, in 1919, with David Sager
In this fascinating podcast, Ted Widmer talks to jazz historian David Sager about his "New York Times" essay on the genre's breakthrough in 1919, its popularity ...
FEB 8, 2019 • Podcast
The Crack-Up: The Early Days of Hollywood, with David Bordwell
In this episode of The Crack-Up series, which explores how 1919 shaped the modern world, film historian David Bordwell discusses two big changes in the American ...
JAN 30, 2019 • Podcast
The Crack-Up: Ireland's Quest for Self-Determination, with Christopher L. Pastore
In the third podcast in The Crack-Up series, which looks at how 1919 shaped the modern world, Ted Widmer discusses the story of the Irish Declaration ...