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About the website

The purpose of this commercial-free educational website is to provide an accessible, accurate, principled, and resource-rich history of United States foreign policy.  The website was launched in October 2015 by Roger Peace, author of the Home page.  The Historians for Peace and Democracy became a sponsor the following month, and the Peace History Society, in June 2016.
The Historians for Peace and Democracy (formerly Historians Against the War) was founded in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War. “As historically minded activists, scholars, students, and teachers, we stand opposed to wars of aggression, military occupations of foreign lands, and imperial efforts by the United States and other powerful nations to dominate the internal life of other countries.”
The Peace History Society is dedicated to peace research and education. “The Peace History Society was founded in 1964 to encourage, and coordinate national and international scholarly work to explore and articulate the conditions and causes of peace and war, and to communicate the findings of scholarly work to the public.”
Completed sections (chronological order of completion):
  • The War of 1812 – Roger Peace, January 2016.
  • The U.S.-Mexican War, 1846-1848 – Roger Peace, with contributions from Gayle Olson-Raymer (Humboldt State University) and readers Tom Clark and Anne Meisenzahl, May 2016.
  • The War of 1898 and the U.S.-Filipino War, 1899-1902 – Brian D’Haeseleer and Roger Peace, September 2016.
  • The Korean War – Jeremy Kuzmarov, September 2016.
  • The Vietnam War – Roger Peace, John Marciano, and Jeremy Kuzmarov, with contributions from Howie Machtinger (Veterans for Peace), Jessica Frazier (University of Rhode Island), and readers Anne Meisenzahl, Brian D’Haeseleer, and Tom Clark, June 2017.
  • “Yankee imperialism,” 1901-1934 – Roger Peace, with contributions from Ann Jefferson (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), Marc Becker (Truman State University), and readers Anne Meisenzahl and Erin Meisenzahl-Peace, January 2018.
  • Central America Wars, 1980s – Virginia S. Williams, Roger Peace, and Jeremy Kuzmarov, with contributions from Brian D’Haeseleer, Richard Grossman (Northeastern Illinois University), and Michael Schmidli (Bucknell University), March 2018.
  • United States participation in World War I – Charles F. Howlett, Jeremy Kuzmarov, and Roger Peace, with contributions from Robert E. Hannigan (Scholar in Residence, Suffolk University) and readers Anne Meisenzahl, Tom Clark, and Jim O’Brien, October 2018.
  • Cold War interventionism, 1945-1990 – Roger Peace, with contributions from readers Max Paul Friedman (American University), Larry Wittner (State Univ. of New York, Albany), Jeremy Kuzmarov, John Marciano, Tom Clark, and Anne Meisenzahl, September 2019.
  • Post-Cold War era, 1989-2001 – Brian D’Haeseleer, Jeremy Kuzmarov, and Roger Peace, with contributions from readers David N. Gibbs (Univ. of Arizona), Helen C. Epstein (Bard College), Dubravko Kakarigi, John Marciano, Tom Clark, and Anne Meisenzahl, March 2020.
  • Introduction: The Fifth Estate – Roger Peace, with contributions from readers Tom Clark, Brian D’Haeseleer, Charles Howlett, Jeremy Kuzmarov, John Marciano, Anne Meisenzahl, and Elizabeth Schmidt, September 2020.
  • Africa and the War on Terror – Elizabeth Schmidt, May 2021.
  • The United States and World War II – Jeremy Kuzmarov and Roger Peace, with contributions from readers Tom Clark, John Marciano, and Anne Meisenzahl, June 2021.
  • Afghanistan, Iraq, and the “war on terror” – Roger Peace and Jeremy Kuzmarov, with contributions from readers Tom Clark, John Marciano, Anne Meisenzahl, and Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, July 2022.

Vietnam War Memorial, Washington, DC

 

About the authors

Brian D’Haeseleer
Co-author of the “War of 1898 and U.S.-Filipino War,” Brian D’Haeseleer is Assistant Professor of U.S. History at Lyon College.  His research interests focus on U.S.-Latin American relations with an emphasis on Central America.  He is the author of The Salvadoran Crucible: The Failure of U.S. Counterinsurgency in El Salvador, 1979-1992 (University Press of Kansas, 2017).
Charles F. Howlett
Co-author of “U.S. Participation in World War I,” Charles Howlett is Professor of Education Emeritus and recipient of the Distinguished Faculty Alumni Award at Molloy College.  He is the author of numerous books on the history of American peace movements and co-author of the American Historical Association’s teaching pamphlet, “The American Peace Movement: History and Historiography” (1985).  His most recent books are Antiwar Dissent and Peace Activism in World War I America (University of Nebraska Press, 2014) with Scott Bennett; and John Dewey: America’s Peace-Minded Educator (University of Southern Illinois Press, 2016) with Audrey Cohan.  He is a member of the Board of Editors for Peace and Change.  He is also a veteran and served as an Additional Duty Air Force Academy Admissions Liaison Officer in the Civilian/Retired category as well as a Retired Commissioned Officer in the Department of Military and Naval Affairs of the New York Guard.
Jeremy Kuzmarov
Author of “The Korean War” essay and the co-author of a number of other essays on this website, Jeremy Kuzmarov received his PhD from Brandeis University and has taught at numerous universities and colleges in the field of U.S. history and foreign relations.  He is the author of The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs (University of Massachusetts Press, 2009); Modernizing Repression: Police Training and Nation Building in the American Century (University of Massachusetts Press, 2012); Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (Clarity Press, 2019); and with co-author John Marciano, The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce (Monthly Review Press, 2018).  He is active in the Historians for Peace and Democracy and the Tulsa Peace fellowship, and is currently the managing editor for CovertAction Magazine.  He can be reached at jkuzmarov2@gmail.com.
John Marciano
Co-author of “The Vietnam War” essay, John Marciano has been an antiwar, social justice, and labor union activist since the 1960s.  Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York at Cortland, he has written a number of books and chapters dealing with American foreign policy and education, including Teaching the Vietnam War (with William L. Griffen, 1979), Civic Illiteracy and Education (1997), and The American War in Vietnam: Crime or Commemoration? (Monthly Review Press, 2016).  From 2004 through 2008, he taught community courses for adults in Santa Monica, CA, centered on Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and William Appleman Williams’s Empire as a Way of Life.

Roger Peace

Website initiator and author of various sections, Roger Peace (family name) earned his doctorate in American Foreign Relations from Florida State University and taught U.S. and world history courses for 17 years.  Included in this regimen were 35 “U.S. in the World” community college courses, which impelled his search for usable website resources.  His motivation for developing value-based historical inquiries derives in part from having grown up in the United States during the Vietnam War, and in part from working as a peace movement organizer, writer, and editor for many years.  He is the author of “Immaculate Deception: The Truman Doctrine,” Passport: The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review (September 2020); “Choosing Values: Toward an Ethical Framework in the Study of History,” The History Teacher (February 2017); A Call to Conscience: The Anti-Contra War Campaign (UMass Press, 2012); “Threat Perception and Multinational Cooperation,” in Frank C. Shanty, ed., Counterterrorism: From the Cold War to the War on Terror (ABC-CLIO, 2012); “Directions for the U.S. Peace Movement,” in Robert Elias and Jennifer Turpin, eds., Rethinking Peace (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994); and A Just and Lasting Peace: The U.S. Peace Movement from the Cold War to Desert Storm (Noble Press, 1991).  See his interview in the American Historical Association Member Spotlight (December 4, 2013).
Elizabeth Schmidt
Author of “Africa and the War on Terror,” Dr. Schmidt is professor emeritus of history at Loyola University Maryland. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A scholar-activist, she has written about U.S. involvement in apartheid South Africa, women under colonialism in Zimbabwe, the nationalist movement in Guinea, and foreign intervention in Africa from the Cold War to the war on terror. Her exposé of the role of U.S. businesses in supporting apartheid was banned by the South African government. More recently, she and her students have worked with African refugee communities in Baltimore, focusing on youth and adult education programs. Schmidt also tutors incarcerated students through the Goucher Prison Education Partnership. Her books include: Foreign Intervention in Africa after the Cold War: Sovereignty, Responsibility, and the War on Terror (2018); Foreign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror (2013); Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946-1958 (2007); Mobilizing the Masses: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Nationalist Movement in Guinea, 1939-1958 (2005); Peasants, Traders, and Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870-1939 (1992); and Decoding Corporate Camouflage: U.S. Business Support for Apartheid (1980).  For more information, see:   https://www.loyola.edu/academics/history/faculty/schmidt.
Virginia S. Williams
Co-author of “Central America wars, 1980s,” Dr. Williams specializes in U.S.-Latin American history and 20th-century social movements in the United States and Latin America.  She directs the Peace, Justice, & Conflict Resolution Studies program at Winthrop University and has served as president of the Peace History Society.