Nick Cullather, professor of international studies at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, will serve as interim dean of the school starting Feb. 1.
Lee Feinstein, founding dean of the school, announced in December that he had accepted a new position in Washington as president of McLarty Associates and will step down from his role at the end of January.
An internationally respected historian of U.S. foreign relations, Cullather served as executive associate dean of the Hamilton Lugar School from 2015 to 2019, and as associate dean from 2014 to 2015. He is also a professor in the Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences. His research specialty is the history of intelligence, development and nation-building.
“I am very pleased that Nick Cullather will help to guide the Hamilton Lugar School as interim dean during the search process,” said Interim Provost and Executive Vice President John Applegate. “His many years of leadership at the school, extensive domestic and international scholarship, and reputation among his peers at IU and around the world position Nick well for this exciting challenge.”
Cullather is the author of “The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia” (2010), which won the Ellis Hawley Prize for economic history and the Robert Ferrell Prize in diplomatic history, and was shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book on a global policy issue. He has won Fulbright grants to Austria, the Philippines and Singapore.
“Stepping into this role is an honor that takes me full circle back to my first job: on the staff of Congressman Lee Hamilton,” Cullather said. The school is named for former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton and the late former Indiana Sen. Richard G. Lugar. “I’m eager to help guide our school during this exciting time of transition.”
Cullather served as Hamilton’s press secretary from 1982 to 1986 and as staff historian for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1992 to 1993 before starting his IU career in 1993 as assistant professor, and associate editor of the Journal of American History. He served as editor of Diplomatic History from 2014 to 2019, the journal of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.
His work draws parallels between the zeitgeist of today as connected to and influenced by the past, and his articles and reviews appear in publications including The Atlantic, the Toronto Globe & Mail, the San Francisco Chronicle and the LA Times Book Review.