Jeffrey Hart
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Jeffrey Hart (b. April 22, 1930 in Brooklyn, New York) is a cultural critic, professor emeritus of English at Dartmouth College, essayist, and columnist who lives in New Hampshire, U.S..
A professor of English literature at Dartmouth for three decades, Hart specialized in 18th century literature but also had a fondness for modernist literature. Hart took a leave of absence from his post in 1968 in order to work for the abortive presidential campaign of then-Governor Ronald Reagan. This role would lead to a position within the Nixon administration as a speechwriter, a post that he subsequently abandoned.
In 1962 he joined William F. Buckley's conservative journal National Review as a book reviewer. Later, he would contribute as a writer and editor for the better part of the ensuing three decades even as he fulfilled his teaching responsibilities as a professor at Dartmouth. He is still a Senior Editor with the magazine.
After nomination by his former student Reggie Williams, Hart was honored with his college's Outstanding Teaching Award, 1992. He has also received the Young America's Foundation Engalitcheff Prize, 1996, among other academic accolades. In 1998, he served as a visiting lecturer at Nichols College.
He currently pens a regular column for King Features Syndicate and is retired from teaching.
The Dartmouth Review was founded in his living room in 1980, and he has served as an adviser to it since then.
Lately, he has launched a fierce Burkean critique of the policies of George W. Bush in the pages of the American Conservative, the Washington Monthly, and The Wall Street Journal. Hart supported John Kerry in 2004 and is supporting Barack Obama in 2008. [1]
[edit] Publications
- When the Going was Good: Life in the Fifties (1982)
- From This Moment On: America in 1940 (1987)
- Acts of Recovery: Essays on Culture and Politics (1989)
- Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education (2001)
- The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times (2006)
