Ted Widmer is a former Senior Fellow and Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. He is a distinguished visiting scholar and director of the Humanities Lab at the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York.
Previously, Widmer was the director of John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. Prior to that he was the director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, and the founding director of the C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College.
Between 1997 and 2001, Widmer was a foreign policy speechwriter and senior adviser to President Clinton. He also served in the Department of State during the Obama administration, as a senior adviser to Secretary Clinton.
Prior to that, Widmer taught at Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D., AM, and AB degrees.
His books include Listening In: The Secret White House Tapes of John F. Kennedy (2012); Martin Van Buren (2005); Campaigns: A Century of Presidential Races (with Alan Brinkley, 2001); and Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City (1999). Widmer also edited the two volumes of American Speeches: Political Oratory from Abraham Lincoln to Bill Clinton published by the Library of America (2006).
Widmer is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, The New Yorker, Politico, The Boston Globe, and The American Scholar.
Featured Work
JAN 18, 2019 • Podcast
The Crack-Up: Prohibition, Immigration, & the Klan, with Lisa McGirr
In the second podcast in The Crack-Up series, which looks at how 1919 shaped the modern world, historian Ted Widmer talks to Harvard's Professor Lisa McGirr ...
JAN 17, 2019 • Transcript
1919 & the Crack Up, with Ted Widmer
Created and hosted by Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Ted Widmer, "The Crack-Up" is a special podcast series about the events of 1919, a year that in ...
JAN 17, 2019 • Podcast
Global Ethics Weekly: 1919 & the Modern World, with Ted Widmer
Historian Ted Widmer discusses his new Carnegie Council podcast series "The Crack-Up" and how 1919 has shaped the modern world. He and host Alex Woodson speak ...
JAN 8, 2019 • Podcast
The Crack-Up: Teddy Roosevelt's Complicated Legacy, with Patty O'Toole
This podcast is part of "The Crack-Up," a special series about the events of 1919, a year that in many ways shaped the 20th century and ...
DEC 6, 2018 • Podcast
Global Ethics Weekly: The End of World War I & the Future of American Democracy, with Ted Widmer
Historian and Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Ted Widmer looks back to the end of the First World War, and the upheaval that followed it in ...
OCT 13, 2016 • Podcast
Global Ethics Forum Preview: Time to Wake Up with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island passionately argues for the need for Congressional action on climate change. In this ...
JUN 23, 2016 • Podcast
Time to Wake Up
"The story of our failure on climate change is a story of our failure to understand the truly manipulative and evil effects of money in ...
NOV 4, 2008 • Podcast
Ark of the Liberties: America and the World
Ted Widmer shows that from its beginnings, the United States, for all its shortfalls, has been by far the world's greatest advocate for freedom.