Gaddis smith bio

Michael Marsland

Gaddis Smith lectured on Yale’s history in Woolsey Hall during the university’s tercentennial in 2001. View full image

The history professor George Wilson Pierson ’26, ’33PhD, wrote the history of Yale from 1871 to 1937 in two volumes. Perhaps no one was more qualified to update that history than Gaddis Smith ’54, ’61PhD, who both observed and helped shape the university for seventy years. Smith indeed wrote the book on Yale in the twentieth century, but he didn’t live to see its publication. He died on December 2 of progressive supranuclear palsy, a degenerative brain disorder, at his home in New Haven. He was 89.

Smith, who succeeded Pierson as the Larned Professor of History, was well respected as a historian of American foreign policy, particularly in the twentieth century. His books included a biography of Dean Acheson and an account of diplomacy in the Carter Administration.

But he was better known to generations at Yale as a teacher. He taught thousands of Yale students and influenced future leaders in academia, government, and international relations. Although Smith was reserved in person, “in the large lecture hall he came alive, transformed into a dynamic, spellbinding orator,” Harvard professor Frederik Logevall ’92PhD, one of his former graduate students, told YaleNews.

The son and grandson of Yale alumni, Smith grew up in New Jersey. He entered Yale College in 1950 and married Barclay Manierre the summer after his freshman year. (He didn’t live in a residential college at Yale until he served as master of Pierson College from 1972 to 1981.) But he did partake of student life, serving as chair of the Yale Daily News and being selected for the Elizabethan Club and Berzelius.

After graduating, Smith worked for a year in Yale’s development office. “A large part of my assignment was to prepare reports on what was happening in Yale College

Gaddis Smith, a renowned scholar of American foreign relations and maritime history and the Larned Professor Emeritus of History, died at his home in New Haven on Dec. 2, after a long illness. He was 90.

If ever there was a modern “Mr. Yale”, Gaddis Smith would qualify for that title. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Yale faculty often arrived on campus first as undergraduates and never left. In the modern era this has been infrequently so. Smith was an exception.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Yale College in 1954, and his Ph.D. from the Department of History seven years later, he spent three years at Duke, and in 1961 returned to Yale, where he would spend the rest of his career.  At Yale, he chaired the Department of History, served as master of Pierson College, and directed the Yale Center for International and Area Studies (YCIAS).

In his major books — “American Diplomacy in the Second World War”; “Dean Acheson (A Biography)”; “Morality, Reason, and Power: American Diplomacy in the Carter Years”; and “The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine” — and his 200 articles, essays, and reviews, Smith redrew the contours of American foreign affairs scholarship.

He was also an expert on maritime history, and taught courses and wrote articles with titles such as “Agricultural Roots of Maritime History” and “Britain’s Clandestine Submarines, 1914-1915: An essay in the History of the North Atlantic Triangle.”

His interest in everything nautical gave him something in common with William F. Buckley, Jr. ’50, whom he had briefly known as an undergraduate. On one famous evening at Pierson College, they agreed not to talk politics, and regaled a crowd with their shared knowledge of and passion for everything ocean going.

Even as an undergraduate Smith was a prominent figure on campus, serving as the chairman (as it was then called) of the Yale Daily News in 1953. Smith steered the paper masterfully during that ye

G. Gaddis Smith ’54 GRD ’61 — with his gray blazer and yellow t-shirt, his ironed khakis and casual sneakers — settles into a booth at the venerable Mory’s.

The scene reeks of Yale past. Anonymous initials — EL & KL, RD & MS — are sketched in the wood behind the history professor emeritus’ cropped white hair; oars from past Harvard-Yale regattas hang overhead.

The professor orders a Baker’s Soup, a turkey sandwich and a Virgin Mary (“It’s like a Bloody Mary, but without the vodka,” he explains).

“This was much more complicated than even I thought it would be,” he says.

Smith, of course, is not alluding to his menu choice — he has, after all, visited Mory’s now hundreds of times since the mid-twentieth century, and has been honored with the club’s highest honor, the Mory’s Cup in 1997; ordering here is second nature.

He is instead referring to his eleven-year quest to achieve no ordinary task: Writing the perfect biography of Yale — one that does not treat the University as an isolated bubble, as past histories have, but instead measures the influence of the external world on the so-called Ivory Tower; one that manages to fit an entire Eli century into a single volume, and not two.

It’s taking longer than expected. Yale President Richard Levin asked Smith in 1997 to take a lead in tercentennial festivities, and he has been spelunking the annals of Elihu ever since, particularly after retiring from full-time teaching in 1999.

“I guess it’s the old journalist in me,” he says, “because I can’t stop absorbing.”

But there’s more. This is a history that Smith has been absorbing for far longer than the past decade; it is a history he has been living — and in which he has played “a minor,” if not substantial,

American historian (1932–2022)

George Gaddis Smith (December 9, 1932 – December 2, 2022) was an American historian who was the Larned Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University and an expert on U.S. foreign relations and maritime history.

Biography

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Gaddis was raised in Summit, New Jersey. He graduated from the Pingry School in 1950.

Smith spent virtually his entire career at Yale. He received his bachelor's degree from Yale College in 1954 where he joined the Berzelius senior society; he served as chairman of the Yale Daily News. In 1961, he earned his PhD in history from Yale, and joined their faculty. In over 40 years of teaching at the university, he chaired the Department of History, served as master of Pierson College and directed the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. He retired from his appointment in 2000.

Smith spent more than 23 years writing a history of the university. Yale in the 20th Century was to be published in August 2007, but it has yet to be released. He continued to teach the occasional seminar at Yale.

Smith received several awards from Yale College for his work there:

• 1986 - The William Clyde DeVane Medal for distinguished scholarship and teaching, awarded by the Yale Chapter (Alpha of Connecticut) of Phi Beta Kappa
• 1989 - The Harwood F. Byrnes-Richard B. Sewall Prize for Teaching Excellence
• 1997 - The Mory's Cup for service to the university

One of his former students was former President George W. Bush. Smith was a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences and had been a member of the Acorn Club.

Smith died at his home in New Haven, Connecticut, on December 2, 2022, at the age of 89.

Publications

Smith authored over 200 articles, book reviews a