John Morton Blum, American political historian, died he was 90.

John Morton Blum was an American political historian, active from the 1950 to 1991. He lived in New Haven, Connecticut and died at the age of 90.

(April 29, 1921 – October 17, 2011) 

Life

Blum hailed from Manhattan and, though Jewish, successfully navigated Phillips Academy in Andover and Harvard University. Upon graduation in 1943, he commissioned as an ensign in the United States Navy. He served in the Caribbean and South Pacific and off Iwo Jima. He returned to Harvard after the war and completed his Ph.D in 1950 under the direction of Frederick Merk.^[1] Blum married Pamela Zink in 1946 and had three children.^[2] He taught at MIT from 1948 to 1957 before being offered a professorship at Yale University in 1957, from which he retired in 1991.^[3][4][5]

Professor at Yale

Blum was on the history faculty at Yale for thirty-four years, where he taught and influenced thousands of students. One of his former students was President George W. Bush. Even though Blum had admitted "I haven't the foggiest recollection of him,"^[6] Blum was mentioned in the President's commencement speech at Yale's Old Campus in May 2001.^[7] Other prominent students of his include Professor Henry Louis Gates, who considered Blum to be his mentor^[8] as well as Professor Laura Kalman (University of California, Santa Barbara),^[9] Steve Gillon, resident historian of the History Channel, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman.^[5]
Blum was considered one of the “Big Three” in Yale’s History Department along with C. Vann Woodward and Edmund Morgan,^[10] and became Chairman of the History Department in the late 1960s.^[5]
The John Morton Blum Fellowship in American History and Culture is awarded at Yale.^[11]

Literature

Author

The author of several historical works, including Joseph Tumulty and the Wilson Era (1951), The Republican Roosevelt (1954), V Was for Victory (1977), and Years of Discord (1992), an edited collection Liberty, Justice, Order, as well as one mystery based on Yale, An Old Blue Corpse (2005).^[12] He also wrote a memoir, A Life with History (2004). Perhaps his most widely read work was The National Experience, a high school history textbook he co-authored with William S. McFeely, Edmund S. Morgan, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Kenneth M. Stampp in 1963.^[13]

Editor

Blum was also prolific as an editor, most notably for Public Philosopher, a 600 page chronicle of the over 20,000 Walter Lippmann letters at Yale, for which he wrote the foreword.^[14] He also edited Henry Morgenthau, Jr.'s book Germany is Our Problem, which detailed the Morgenthau Plan for the post-war occupation of Germany. ^[15]

Film and television

Blum made a cameo appearance as himself in the 1983 Woody Allen film Zelig,^[16] and he has appeared in various documentaries on PBS such as the American Experience series, including Theodore Roosevelt in 1996 with fellow historian David McCullough.^[17] In 1999 he appeared in "The Great War" segment of The Century: America's Time.^[18]

Honors and Awards

• American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1960)^[1]
• Pitt Professorship at Cambridge (1963–1964)^[1]
• Harmsworth Professorship, Oxford University (1976–1977)^[1]
• Honorary Degree from Harvard University (1980)^[1]

To see more of who died in 2011 click here