Elliott School Professors Martha Finnemore and Michael Barnett were listed as the No. 1 and No. 11 scholars, respectively, who produced the most interesting scholarship in the past five years in the 2011 Teaching, Research and International Policy (TRIP) survey 
, which included responses from 1,582 international relations faculty members.
James G. Hershberg
Associate Professor of History and International Affairs
Office: Phillips 326, 801 22nd Street, N.W.
Phone: (202) 994-6476
Fax: (202) 994-6231
E-mail: jhershb@gwu.edu
Education:
Ph.D., Tufts University
Expertise:
International history of the Cold War, contemporary international relations, nuclear history
Background:
Born in New York City (Brooklyn) in 1960, Professor Hershberg received an A.B. in American History from Harvard College in 1982; a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University in 1985; and a Ph. D. from Tufts University in 1989. After teaching at Tufts and the California Institute of Technology in 1989-91, he directed the Cold War International History Project (and edited the project's Bulletin) from 1991-96 before coming to George Washington University in 1997 and now edits the CWIHP book series co-published by the Stanford University and Wilson Center Presses. He received the 1994 Stuart Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Policy.
Currently working on various case studies of US communications with Cold War adversaries (Cuba, China, North Vietnam, Iran), he is a co-founder of The GW Cold War Group, a Cold War studies group at GWU for both faculty and students, and works closely with the National Security Archive, a declassified documents repository and research institute based at the University.
Selected Publications
- Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam. Stanford University Press/Wilson Center Press, 2012.
- "The Cuban Missile Crisis." In The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. 2, ed. O.A. Westad and M.P. Leffler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
- "Informing the Enemy: Sino-American 'Signaling' and the Vietnam War, 1965." In Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the Cold War, ed. Priscilla Roberts, 193-257. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Stanford University Press, 2006. Co-authored with Chen Jian.
- "'The Jig Was Up': J. Robert Oppenheimer and the International Control of Atomic Energy, 1947-49." In Reappraising Oppenheimer: Centennial Studies and Reflections, ed. Cathryn Carson and David A. Hollinger, 149-183. Berkeley: Office for History of Science and Technology, University of California, Berkeley, 2005.
Other scholarly and popular articles have focused on topics related to the Cold War and nuclear history such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam and Afghanistan Wars, the Iran-contra affair, and revelations from the communist archives.