John Lewis Gaddis

Last year in history we used one of John Lewis Gaddis' books as a textbook.  Gaddis is one of the leading cold war historians, so I thought it was pretty cool to see on the Humanities newsletter that he was speaking at OSU.  His book was well written, so I thought I'd go and listen. 

It was at the Mershon Center, and only about 20 people went, almost all of which were grad students or professors. Gaddis' main point of conversation was Kennan, the US ambassador to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Kennan was responsible for the Long Telegram, which essentially shaped the US  foreign policy in regards to the Soviets. He used a hedgehog/fox analogy to describe Kennan's life. Foxes are people that can adapt quickly to new situations and maintain an overarching view of a situation, but consequently are not good at predicting the outcome of an even.  Hedgehogs are stuck in one mindset, and tend to deliberate heavily before reaching a decision; however, they have a better chance at predicting an outcome. Gaddis claims that the best leader is one that can be a hedgehog or a fox when the situation demands it. Unfortunately Kennan reverted to hedgehog in a time when he was needed as a fox. 

John Mueller was also in attendance, which was cool because I was just assigned one of his papers to read for my foreign policy class. He's a professor here at OSU.