Experts

Marc Selverstone

Fast Facts

  • Director of presidential studies
  • Co-chair, Presidential Recordings Program
  • Won the Bernath Book Prize for Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945-1950.
  • Expertise on John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War

 

Areas Of Expertise

  • Foreign Affairs
  • American Defense and Security
  • Politics
  • The Presidency

Marc Selverstone is the Gerald L. Baliles Professor of Presidential Studies at the Miller Center, the Center's director of presidential studies, and co-chair of the Center’s Presidential Recordings Program. He earned a BA degree in philosophy from Trinity College (CT), a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University, and a PhD in history from Ohio University. 

A historian of the Cold War, Selverstone is the author of Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945-1950 (Harvard), which won the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. His most recent book is The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam (Harvard University Press).

As co-chair of the Presidential Recordings Program, Selverstone edits the secret White House tapes of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon. He is the general editor of The Presidential Recordings Digital Edition, the primary online portal for transcripts of the tapes, published by the University of Virginia Press.

Selverstone’s broader scholarship focuses on presidents and presidential decision-making, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s. He has written for journals and edited volumes on the Kennedy presidency, the Cold War, and the American war in Vietnam. He also co-edits the Miller Center’s “Studies on the Presidency” series (Virginia) with Miller Center Professor Guian McKee, and is the editor of A Companion to John F. Kennedy (Wiley-Blackwell). 

 

Marc Selverstone News Feed

With help from the Nixon White House tapes, Marc Selverstone, of the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs, discloses the president's true intentions in ending the war in Vietnam, and Admiral Pete Bondi recalls the chaos on the ground as North Vietnamese troops systematically overtook the southern provinces almost three years later.
Marc Selverstone MPR News
The Vietnam War pulled America apart, dividing our country into factions. Forty years after the fall of Saigon, the War is still contentious, amongst citizens, policy-makers, and scholars. And yet, memories of the Vietnam War unite us. In a new eight-part special series, With Good Reason explores the unresolved tensions in our understanding of the war and the perspectives and people it forever changed.
Marc Selverstone With Good Reason
Marc Selverstone is featured in "Presidents at War," a two-night History Channel event. This landmark series tells the story of World War II through the experiences of eight remarkable men. Men who, like sixteen million other Americans, bravely serve their country during its darkest hour, and then go on to further service as the nation’s Commanders-in-Chief. Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. This is the story of how their war experiences change them, how they emerge from conflict as leaders and how the crucible of war shapes the decisions they make when they reach the White House.
Marc Selverstone History Channel
I went to the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia to speak to two historians about the significance of the last week of August in 1968. Marc Selverstone and Guian McKee answered my questions, beginning with this: What was the atmosphere like? What were Americans thinking? What were Democrats and Republicans thinking? Guian McKee answers first.
Marc Selverstone The Score
Beginning with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a string of presidents used taping equipment with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Their motives ranged from defending themselves against inaccurate news leaks (F.D.R), to help in preparing memoirs and developing political leverage. Along the way, these tapes become an invaluable historical resource, says Dr. Marc Selverstone, an associate professor in presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, and chair of the Center’s Presidential Recordings Program. “They’re an incredible and powerful window into the way power works,” says Dr. Selverstone.
Marc Selverstone The Christian Science Monitor
Miller Center scholar Marc Selverstone recounts for the Washington Post how 50 years ago this week, the Senate reclaimed its power to control US military conflicts.
Marc Selverstone