Eric Foner is a leading historian specializing in nineteenth century American history, the American Civil War and Reconstruction, and is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. He is also a widely published historian of racial, gender and other social issues. He served as President of the Organization of American Historians 1993–1994, and of the American Historical Association in 2000. He is currently on the editorial board of The Nation.
He earned his BA, summa cum laude, from Columbia University in 1963, a second BA from Oriel College, Oxford, in 1965, and his PhD in 1969, under the tutelage of Richard Hofstadter at Columbia.
Professor Foner's published books include Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (1970), Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (1976), Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War (1980), Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy (1983), Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (1988), Freedom's Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders During Reconstruction (1993), and The Story of American Freedom (1998), and Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World (2002). His survey textbook of American history, Give Me Liberty! An American History and a companion volume of documents, Voices of Freedom, will appear in 2004. He has also served as an Op-Ed writer for the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Nation and several other publications.
Foner's political philosophy, which often form the basis of an underlying historiography to his work, may be considered neo-Marxist, and in his youth he was quite interested in Soviet politics (he especially admired Mikhail Gorbachev). These views have given rise to his nickname "Eric the Red" among students. He is often criticized by the political right-wing as un-American for his original and unconventional works that challenge the ideal American history.
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Last updated: 08-10-2005 22:23:21
