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Donald Kagan (; born May 1, 1932) is an American historian and classicist at Yale University specializing in ancient Greece, notable for his four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War. He formerly taught in the Department of History at Cornell University. At present, Kagan is considered among the foremost American scholars of Greek history. ==Biography== Born into a Jewish family from Kuršėnai, Lithuania, Kagan grew up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York, where his family emigrated when he was two years old, shortly after the death of his father. He graduated from Brooklyn College in 1954, received an MA from Brown University in 1955 and a PhD from the Ohio State University in 1958. Once a liberal Democrat, Kagan changed his views in 1969. According to Jim Lobe, cited by Craig Unger, Kagan's turn away from liberalism occurred in 1969 when Cornell University was pressured into starting a Black Studies program by gun-wielding militants seizing the Willard Straight Hall: "Watching administrators demonstrate all the courage of Neville Chamberlain had a great impact on me, and I became much more conservative." He was one of the original signers of the 1997 Statement of Principles by the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century, co-founded by his son Robert Kagan.〔(【引用サイトリンク】accessdate=2007-08-19 )〕〔http://web.archive.org/web/20110303065219/http://www.newamericancentury.org/aboutpnac.htm〕 On the eve of the 2000 presidential elections, Kagan and his son, Frederick Kagan, published ''While America Sleeps'', a call to increase defense spending. The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded Donald Kagan the National Humanities Medal in 2002, and selected him to deliver the 2005 Jefferson Lecture, which the NEH calls "the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities."〔(Jefferson Lecturers ) at NEH Website (retrieved January 22, 2009).〕 Kagan's Jefferson Lecture was entitled "In Defense of History";〔Donald Kagan,("In Defense of History," ) text of Jefferson Lecture at NEH website.〕 he argued that history is of primary importance in the study of the humanities.〔Philip Kennicott, ("Yale Historian Donald Kagan, Mixing the Old And the Neo," ) ''Washington Post'', May 13, 2005.〕〔George F. Will, ("History's Higher Ground," ) ''Washington Post'', May 19, 2005.〕 In a review in ''The New Yorker'', critic George Steiner said of Kagan's seminal four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War: "The temptation to acclaim Kagan's four volumes as the foremost work of history produced in North America in this century is vivid." Until his retirement in 2013, Kagan was Sterling Professor of Classics and History at Yale University—a title reserved for only the few most accomplished academics at Yale. His course "The Origins of War" was one of the university's most popular courses for twenty-five years. He currently teaches "Introduction to Ancient Greek History"〔(Donald Kagan's Course at Open Yale Courses )〕 and upper level History and Classical Civilization seminars focusing on topics from Thucydides to the Lakedaimonian hegemony. Kagan lives in New Haven, Connecticut. He is married to Myrna Kagan, a teacher and historian in her own right, and the author of "Vision in the Sky: New Haven's Early Years, 1638-1784." He is the father of Robert Kagan and Frederick Kagan, both well-known writers. Robert Kagan's wife is Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokesperson from 2011 to 2013 and the current Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. Frederick Kagan's wife is Kimberly Kagan, a well-known military historian and founder and president of the Institute for the Study of War. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Donald Kagan」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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