Edward L. Widmer

Edward L. (Ted) Widmer is Distinguished Lecturer at the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York. Before that he taught or directed research centers at Harvard University, Washington College, the Library of Congress, and Brown University. He earned an A.B. degree in the History and Literature of France and America and a Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization, both from Harvard. In addition to his teaching, he served as a foreign policy speechwriter and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, and later as a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, and the New Yorker. He also serves as a trustee of the Massachusetts Historical Society and Robert College in Istanbul. In 2020 he published Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington, which won the Lincoln Forum Book Prize and the first book prize of the Society of Presidential Descendants. With support from the Guggenheim Foundation, he will work on a book project relating to Boston in April 1968.