Pulitzer Prize-Winning Historian to Speak at Tufts

David Hackett Fischer to Examine Presidential Leadership in Free Lecture

David Hackett Fischer, Warren professor of history at Brandeis University, will be the eighth speaker in the Richard E. Snyder President’s Lecture Series on April 3 at 4:30 p.m. in Cabot Auditorium, Cabot Center, on Tufts University’s Medford/Somerville campus. Tickets are free and can be reserved by calling 617-627-2000.

During his lecture, “Open Leaders: Washington, Lincoln and FDR,” Fischer will talk about how three great presidents invented and then reinvented a way of leading people with conflicting opinions.

A Pulitzer Prize winning historian, Fischer is the author of many thought-provoking books on American history, including Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History, and Paul Revere’s Ride. In his first book, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (1970), Fischer boldly critiqued his profession and warned against assuming that past decision makers operated with the same perspective that historians now have. Fischer was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his 2004 book Washington’s Crossing, a study of Washington’s leadership in the crossing of the Delaware and the subsequent battles of Trenton and Princeton.

Endowed by Richard E. Snyder, a 1955 Tufts graduate and the former chairman and CEO of Simon and Schuster, the Snyder lecture series was established in 2004 to bring to Tufts speakers who have challenged conventional wisdom in their professional work.