About

Daniel Bessner is an historian and journalist who currently serves as the Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Associate Professor in American Foreign Policy at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. His academic work focuses on the history and contemporary practice of U.S. foreign relations, the history and theory of liberalism, and the history and practice of the entertainment industry. Bessner has authored the book 'Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual' and has co-edited works on sovereignty, social science, democracy, and U.S. foreign relations. In addition to his scholarship, he has contributed to major publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Nation, and has written cover stories for Harper's Magazine on U.S. foreign relations and Hollywood. He has received recognition including the Charles Schmitt Prize for Best Essay in Intellectual History by a Young Historian and has been a finalist for other notable awards. Bessner is also the co-host of the foreign affairs podcast American Prestige, which has won awards, and has appeared on several national television programs and NPR. He previously held the Joff Hanauer Honors Professorship in Western Civilization and is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an Associate of the Alameda Institute, and a Contributing Editor at Jacobin.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Sociology
• History
• Economic history
• Geography
• Political economy
• Archaeology
• Economic system
• Economics

Selected publications

• Cold War Liberalism

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2026-01-30

  book1st authorCorresponding

  In the mid-twentieth century, Cold War liberalism exerted a profound influence on the US state, US foreign policy, and liberal thought across the North Atlantic world. The essays in this volume examine the history of this important ideology from a variety of perspectives. Whereas most prior works that analyze Cold War liberalism have focused on small groupings of canonical intellectuals, this book explores how the ideology transformed politics, society, and culture writ large. From impacting US foreign policy in the Middle East, to influencing the ideological contours of industrial society, to shaping the urban landscape of Los Angeles, Cold War liberalism left an indelible mark on modern history. This collection also illuminates the degree to which Cold War liberalism continues to shape how intellectuals and policymakers understand and approach the world.

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• Index

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2026-01-30

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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• Recentering the United States in the Historiography of American Foreign Relations

  2024 · 7 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • History
  • Political Science
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• U.S. Elites and Scientific Mobilization After World War II

  2024-01-01

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• Introduction: Rethinking U.S. World Power—Domestic Histories of U.S. Foreign Relations

  2024-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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• A Brief History of Cold War Liberalism

  Cold War History · 2024-03-04 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In recent years, a flurry of books that explore the history and theory of liberalism have appeared. Nevertheless, there has been surprisingly little scholarship examining the history of 'Cold War liberalism' — one of the most important instantiations of twentieth-century liberalism — as a phenomenon in and of itself, and the work that has been done has mostly focused on a small coterie of American and Western European intellectuals. This essay is a first step attempt to articulate a broader history of Cold War liberalism, tracing the ideology's origins and influence from the 1910s until the 1980s. We focus on three distinct elements of the history of Cold War liberalism: its embrace of anti-democratic politics and how this informed the creation of the national security state; its linking of reform to the imperatives of national security; and its decline and transformation in the 1970s and 1980s.

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• Rethinking the relationship between a US‐based global security architecture and global capitalism

  Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers · 2023 · 5 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Economic system

  Abstract A comment on Felix Mallin and James D. Sidaway's ‘Critical Geoeconomics: A Genealogy of Writing Politics, Economy, and Space’.

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• Delineating Progressive Grand Strategies

  Security Studies · 2023-03-15

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• Introduction. Who Decides?

  Berghahn Books · 2022-09-27

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• Conclusion. The Myth of the Decision

  Berghahn Books · 2022-09-27

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Frequent coauthors

• Nicolas Guilhot

  8 shared

• Matthew Sparke

  University of California, Santa Cruz

  4 shared

• Fredrik Logevall

  Harvard University Press

  2 shared

• Michael Brenes

  Yale University

  2 shared

• Eric Lorber

  2 shared

• Richard Hebdige

  1 shared

• Janet O’Shea

  1 shared

• Michael Franczak

  1 shared

Labs

• Sephardic StudiesPI

  Both graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Washington engage in a wide range of original research projects in Sephardic Studies.

Education

• Ph.D., History

  Duke University

  2013

Awards & honors

• Charles Schmitt Prize for Best Essay in Intellectual History…