William R. Polk

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Roe Polk is a veteran foreign policy consultant, author, and relation of president James K. Polk. He was born in Fort Worth, Texas and grew up on a ranch in west Texas. He attended public school in Fort Worth and the New Mexico Military Institute. He studied in Latin America and worked on a Rome newspaper before matriculating and earning a BA and Ph.D from Harvard University, and BA and MA from Oxford University. He also studied at the Universidad Nacional de Mexico, the Universidad Nacional de Chile, the University of Baghdad and the American University of Cairo. Polk taught Middle Eastern history and politics at Harvard from 1955–61, and was then appointed by President Kennedy to the State Department's Policy Planning Council focusing on the Middle East and North Africa. While there he served as a member of the Cuban Missile Crisis management team. He was also Deputy Commissioner-General of UNRWA during this period. Polk resigned from the federal government to join the University of Chicago as Professor of History in 1965, where he taught for ten years and established their Center for Middle Eastern Studies, serving as Founding Director. In 1967 became president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs, which hosted the 20th Pugwash Conference on nuclear weapons problems, helped organize the “Table Ronde” meeting which laid groundwork for the European Union, and contributed to planning the United Nations Environmental Program. During the 1967 Middle Eastern Six-Day War he returned to Washington to write a draft peace treaty and to serve as an advisor to McGeorge Bundy, who was President Johnson’s personal representative during that crisis.

Polk is senior director of the W.P. Carey Foundation and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He lives and writes in southern France and is married to Baroness Elisabeth von Oppenheimer. He has lectured at the Canadian Institute of International Relations, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and the Institute of World Economy and International Affairs of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, as well as over a hundred universities and colleges.

[edit] Books

  • Backdrop to Tragedy: The Struggle for Palestine (1957). coauthors William R. Polk, David M. Stamler, and Edmund Asfour. Beacon Press online edition
  • The Opening of South Lebanon, 1788-1840: A Study of the Impact of The West on the Middle East (1963). Harvard University Press
  • The United States and the Arab World (1965). Harvard University Press, 3rd edition 1975: ISBN 0-674-92718-4
  • Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East: The Nineteenth Century (1968). University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-67425-8
  • Passing Brave (1973). Alfred Knopf, ISBN 0-394-47893-2
  • The Elusive Peace: The Middle East in the Twentieth Century (1979). Palgrave McMillan, ISBN 0-312-24383-9
  • Neighbors and Strangers: The Fundamentals of Foreign Affairs (1997). University Of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-67329-4
  • Polk's Folly: An American Family History (2000). Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-49150-6, Anchor paperback ISBN 0-385-49151-4
  • Understanding Iraq: The Whole Sweep of Iraqi History from Genghis Khan's Mongols to the Ottoman Turks to the British Mandate to the American Occupation (2005). HarperCollins hardcover: ISBN 0-06-076468-6, paperback: ISBN 0-06-076469-4
  • The Birth of America: From Before Columbus to the Revolution (2006). HarperCollins hardcover: ISBN 0-06-075090-1
  • Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now (2006). coauthor George McGovern, Simon & Schuster paperback: ISBN 1-4165-3456-3
  • Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerrilla War, from the American Revolution to Iraq (2007). HarperCollins hardcover: ISBN 0-06-123619-5

[edit] External links