Acclaimed historian and international affairs expert Martin Sherwin '59 brings an active interest in promoting international unity to his new position as director of the Dickey Endowment for International Understanding.
Sherwin began his new position at the endowment, which seeks to educate students in international issues, in July.
"The complexities of the world require a flexible policy and a public opinion that can tolerate ambiguity and partial solutions. This requires a public educated in international issues. Dartmouth College has a responsibility to participate in this process," Sherwin said.
Before coming to Dartmouth, Sherwin worked as the Walter S. Dickson Professor of History at Tufts University and the founding director of Tufts' Nuclear Age History and Humanities Center.
At Tufts, he founded the Global Classroom Project. This "spacebridge" program uses television satellite technology to link university students in Moscow and the United States. The program permits interactive discussions about pressing issues such as the arms race, freedom of the press and Russian economic recovery.
I consider this my most memorable project," Sherwin said.
Already, Sherwin is discussing with administrators the possibility of bringing a similar satellite program to Dartmouth. Included in this project would be the construction of a television conference center.
Sherwin is also planning a conference for Nov. 11 and 12 called "The Future of Democracy in Russia." The panelists will discuss the collapse of the Soviet Union and its impact on the global community.
"The U. S. can not single-handedly transform the world, but it must participate as an active agent in the evolution of global politics. That means we will be involved in messy, difficult, and unpleasant situations like Somalia has become," Sherwin said regarding the nation's role in the post-Cold War era.
Sherwin's book, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and The Grand Alliance, was a Pulitzer Prize runner-up. The book won the Stewart Bernath Prize awarded by the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations and the American History Book Prize awarded by the National Historical Society.
Leonard Rieser, the former chair of the Dickey Endowment, said Sherwin's book "is known internationally as a classic in its field."
Rieser said Sherwin brings to the College "vitality, good ideas, and a commitment to involve students and faculty in addressing international issues."
Sherwin has also been an adviser for a number of acclaimed documentary films on the history of the nuclear age, including "The Day After Trinity," a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer; "A History of Nuclear Strategy," and the 13-part PBS series, "War and Peace in the Nuclear Age."
After graduating from Dartmouth in 1959, Sherwin served in the U.S. Navy for four years and went on to teach U.S. history and foreign policy at the University of California at Berkeley in 1967. In 1971, he received his doctorate from UCLA.
During the next 10 years Sherwin worked at Cornell University as a research associate and lecturer with the Center for International Relations and the Program in Science, Technology and Society and at Princeton University, where he taught U.S. history and international relations in the history department and the Woodrow Wilson School.
Sherwin has held appointments as the Cardozo Fund Visiting Professor of American History (1980-81) at Yale University and as the Barnette-Miller Visiting Professor of International Relations at Wellesley College (1983).
Sherwin taught with Dartmouth's Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program during Summer terms in 1970s and taught interdisciplinary courses here from 1980 until 1989.
