Experts

Marc Selverstone

Fast Facts

  • Director of presidential studies
  • Co-chair, Presidential Recordings Program
  • Won the Bernath Book Prize for Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945-1950.
  • Expertise on John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War

 

Areas Of Expertise

  • Foreign Affairs
  • American Defense and Security
  • Politics
  • The Presidency

Marc Selverstone is the Miller Center's director of presidential studies, co-chair of the Center’s Presidential Recordings Program, and professor of presidential studies. He earned a BA degree in philosophy from Trinity College (CT), a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University, and a PhD in history from Ohio University. 

A historian of the Cold War, Selverstone is the author of Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945-1950 (Harvard), which won the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. His most recent book is The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam (Harvard University Press).

As co-chair of the Presidential Recordings Program, Selverstone edits the secret White House tapes of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon. He is the general editor of The Presidential Recordings Digital Edition, the primary online portal for transcripts of the tapes, published by the University of Virginia Press.

Selverstone’s broader scholarship focuses on presidents and presidential decision-making, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s. He has written for journals and edited volumes on the Kennedy presidency, the Cold War, and the American war in Vietnam. He also co-edits the Miller Center’s “Studies on the Presidency” series (Virginia) with Miller Center Professor Guian McKee, and is the editor of A Companion to John F. Kennedy (Wiley-Blackwell). 

 

Marc Selverstone News Feed

For two Americans in Saigon in 1963, the personal and the political combined to spark the drama of a lifetime. Frederick "Fritz" Nolting, the U.S. ambassador, and his second-in-command, William "Bill" Trueheart, were immortalized in David Halberstam's landmark 1972 work, The Best and the Brightest, as accidental players in a pivotal juncture in modern U.S. history. A new book in the Miller Center Studies on the Presidency series with UVA Press, Diplomats at War: Friendship and Betrayal on the Brink of the Vietnam Conflict, is a personal memoir by former Washington Post reporter Charles Trueheart—Bill’s son and Nolting's godson—who grew up amid the events that traumatized two families and an entire nation.
Marc Selverstone Miller Center Presents
They “provide unique windows into the presidency, helping us better understand how policy is made and power is used,” said Marc Selverstone, director of Presidential Studies and co-chair of the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “You get it, as LBJ would have said, with the bark off.”
Marc Selverstone Washington Post
The archivist of the United States, Colleen Shogan, joins Miller Center experts to discuss the importance of preserving presidential records and making them accessible to the public, highlighting the fundamental role that transparency plays in a healthy democracy.

Shogan joins Russell Riley, co-chair of the Miller Center’s Presidential Oral History Program and White Burkett Miller Center Professor of Ethics and Institutions, in a conversation moderated by Barbara Perry, co-chair of the Presidential Oral History Program and Gerald L. Baliles Professor in Presidential Studies.
Barbara Perry, Marc Selverstone, and Russell Riley Miller Center Presents
Marc Selverstone, the director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, co-chair of the Center’s Presidential Recordings Program, and professor of presidential studies, moderated a discussion with Francis Gavin, the Giovanni Agnelli distinguised professor and director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University; Sheyda Jahanbani, an associate professor at the University of Kansas; and Fredrik Logevall, the Laurence D. Belfer professor of international affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and a professor of history at Harvard University. The conversation focused on President Lyndon Johnson’s foreign policy and the recent book, LBJ’s America: The Life and Legacies of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Marc Selverstone War on the Rocks
Eric visits the Miller Center and joins John Owen IV, the Amb. Henry J. and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor of Politics, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and the Miller Center for Public Affairs and Marc Selverstone, the Miller Center’s director of presidential studies, co-chair of the Center’s Presidential Recordings Program, and professor of presidential studies. They discus John’s new book, 'The Ecology of Nations: American Democracy in a Fragile World Order,' and Marc’s book, 'The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam.'
Eric Edelman, John Owen, Marc Selverstone The Bulwark
It's one of the great what-ifs in American history: had President John F. Kennedy not been assassinated, would he have escalated involvement in Vietnam in the same way his successor Lyndon Johnson did? Some say yes, while others say that JFK would have pulled out, sparing the nation the trauma of the war. In this episode, we interview Marc J. Selverstone about this fascinating question.
Marc Selverstone This American President