Frederick Sherwood Dunn

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"Frederick S. Dunn" redirects here. For the classical scholar, see Frederic Stanley Dunn.
Dunn in 1951

Frederick Sherwood Dunn (June 10, 1893 – March 17, 1962)

U.S. Department of State, he went into academia and taught at Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, and Princeton University
, publishing several books during his career.

He was founder and a director of both Yale's Institute of International Studies and the Center of International Studies at Princeton. He founded the journal World Politics and was chairman of its editorial board until 1961.[1]

Early life and military service

Dunn was born in

Doctor of law degree in 1917.[3][2]

He was admitted to the bar in 1917 but during that year entered the United States Army, in which he served until 1919.[2] With the American Expeditionary Forces in France, he was a first lieutenant in the AEF Tank Corps.[3]

Legal career

Upon returning to the United States, Dunn began practicing law in

U.S. Department of State,[3] where his positions included being an Assistant Solicitor, an associate counsel in American and British Claims Arbitration, and a lawyer for United States agent before the Mixed Claims Commission (United States and Mexico).[4] He was known as Ted Dunn to friends.[5]

In 1922, Dunn became engaged to,[6] and then married, Eliza Gordon Woodbury.[2] She was the daughter Gordon Woodbury, the former Assistant Secretary of the Navy,[7] and she also went by the name Gordon.[2][3] They had two children,[2] but she died in 1929,[3] three weeks after giving birth for the second time.[8]

Scholar of international law

While in State Department positions, two of which involved international claims commissions, Dunn began thinking about the factors behind how the claims were decided and how they often went beyond legal considerations.

Carnegie Fellowship, and earned a Ph.D. there in 1928.[3][2]

Between 1928 and 1933 Dunn published three influential books (the first of which was based on his dissertation), as well as several articles, on the sociological aspect of international jurisprudence.[4]

Dunn was the Creswell Lecturer on International Law at Johns Hopkins from 1929 to 1935 and during the same period was also executive secretary of the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations at the same university.[4][2][3][9]

Scholar of international relations

Reading list for one of Dunn's international relations courses at Yale

In 1935, Dunn went to Yale University, where he became a professor of international relations.[4] At the same time he was a co-founder of the Yale Institute of International Studies along with Nicholas J. Spykman, the new entity's first director, and Arnold Wolfers.[10] Dunn's own investigations broadened greatly in scope from his earlier work but he still applied the perspective he had developed studying international law to issues of world politics.[4]

Dunn became the director of the institute in 1940, when Spykman fell ill, and held that post through 1951.[10] From this point on, his administrative and project roles took priority over his own research and writing.[4] Under Dunn, the institute had a loose, informal organization.[4] It focused on work that would clarify choices faced by American foreign policy and determine ways in which American power could best be deployed.[11] Dunn urged institute members to write with clarity and to keep their books short.[4] Journalist Fred Kaplan has written, "In the 1940s, there was no more exciting and stimulating place in the academic world for an international relations scholar to reside than at the Institute of International Studies at Yale."[10]

During 1948 and 1949 Dunn was a U.S. delegate to UNESCO general conferences in Beirut and Paris.[2][3]

Dunn argued that "the

origin of wars is to be found.. in the minds... of men". He argued that ignorance and dissatisfaction were the causes of war, and advocated for a United Nations that could contribute to world peace through provision of education and raising living standards.[12]

Shift of universities

During 1950–51, the Yale Institute of International Studies ran into a conflict with the new President of Yale University, A. Whitney Griswold, who felt that scholars should conduct research as individuals rather than in cooperative groups[13] and who thought that the institute should do more historical, detached analysis rather than focus on current issues and recommendations on policy.[14] In addition there was some personal animosity involved, related to Griswold believing that institute members had argued against his receiving tenure.[15]

In April 1951, Dunn and five of his political science colleagues – Percy Corbett,

Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at that university, the Center of International Studies was created.[16] The news of the shift from Yale to Princeton made the front page of The New York Times;[13] the new center became known as the continuation of the old institute, with one government publication later terming it a "reincarnation".[17] The President of Princeton, Harold W. Dodds, used a metaphor from American football to summarize the events: "Yale fumbled and Princeton recovered the ball."[15]
One statement written after Dunn's passing said of him, "Beneath a quiet, unassuming manner, Frederick Dunn maintained unyielding firmness in acts of whose rightness he was convinced. It is believed that his transfer of the Center from Yale to Princeton was an instance of this."[5]

In addition to being director of the center, Dunn was named the Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice at Princeton.[4] Dunn's later scholarly work included a focus on decision-making and some of the self-deceptions made by Foreign Offices: in particular, he stated that people often thought they were finding a solution to a technical problem when in actuality they were making a political choice.[4]

During his career Dunn also served as a trustee for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was the chair of the board of editors of the quarterly academic journal World Politics, which had been founded at the Yale institute, and did consulting work for the RAND Corporation.[3] He was also a twenty-year member of the Century Association.[5]

Retirement and death

Dunn retired from Princeton in July 1961.[3] He did teach a seminar in politics at Bryn Mawr College during the fall of that year, while continuing to reside in Princeton.[3]

He died on March 17, 1962, at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital's neurological unit.[3] His final book, Peace-making and the Settlement with Japan, was published posthumously in 1963.[4]

One of his colleagues,

Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research at Johns Hopkins, and that all four were initially led by colleagues of Dunn at Yale.[4]

Personal life

In 1949 Dunn remarried, to the Mary Beale Willard, and gained two step-children.[2][3]

Published works

  • The Practice and Procedure of International Conferences (Johns Hopkins Press, 1929)
  • The Protection of Nationals: A Study in the Application of International Law (Johns Hopkins Press, 1932)
  • The Diplomatic Protection of Americans in Mexico (Columbia University Press, 1933)
  • Peaceful Change: A Study of International Procedures (Council on Foreign Relations, 1937)
  • The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order [contributor] (Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1946)
  • War and the Minds of Men (Council on Foreign Relations, 1950)
  • Peace-making and the Settlement with Japan (Princeton University Press, 1963)

References

  1. ^
    S2CID 154573823
    .
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Who's Who in America 1962–1963 (32rd ed.). Chicago: Marquis Who's Who. 1962. p. 867.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m "Frederick Dunn of Princeton Dies" (PDF). The New York Times. March 16, 1962. p. 86.
  4. ^
    S2CID 155981849
    .
  5. ^ a b c "The Century Association Year-Book 1963". The Century Association. 1963. pp. 173–174.
  6. ^ "'14". Princeton Alumni Weekly. April 19, 1922. p. 618.
  7. ^ Swenson, Oscar (February 1921). "Inherits Naval Traditions". National Magazine. pp. 445–447.
  8. ^ Annual report of the Town of Bedford for the Year Ending January 31, 1930. Manchester, New Hampshire: The Clarke Press. 1930. pp. 83, 86.
  9. ISBN 978-1-316-51161-9
    .
  10. ^ a b c Kaplan, Fred (1983). The Wizards of Armageddon. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. pp. 19–23.
  11. ^ Parmar, Inderjeet (2011). "American Hegemony, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of Academic International Relations in the United States". In Guilhot, Nicolas (ed.). The Invention of International Relations Theory: Realism, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the 1954 Conference on Theory. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 182–209.
  12. JSTOR 2009766
    .
  13. ^ a b c Levey, Stanley (April 23, 1951). "Six of Faculty Leaving Yale For Princeton in Policy Split" (PDF). The New York Times. pp. 1, 18.
  14. ISBN 978-1-4008-4946-8
    .
  15. ^
    ISBN 1-58826-055-0
    .
  16. ISBN 0-691-04654-9
    .
  17. ^ University Centers of Foreign Affairs Research: A Selective Directory. U.S. Department of State. 1968. p. 138.
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