Bruce J. Schulman

Bruce J. Schulman
Professor of History, Boston University

BRUCE J. SCHULMAN is the William E. Huntington Professor of History at Boston University.  Born in New York City, he received the B.A. summa cum laude with Distinction in History from Yale University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University, 

Schulman’s teaching and research concentrate on the history of the modern United States, particularly on the relationships between politics and broader cultural change.  He is the author of three books and the editor or co-editor of five others, including From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt (1991), Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism (1994), The Seventies (2001), Rightward Bound (2008), Making the American Century (2014), and Media Nation (2017).  Schulman has held research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, and the Marjorie Kovler Fund. 

Schulman has also directed the research of 44 doctoral students, who have produced among them 35 books and occupied faculty positions at Columbia, San Francisco State, UMass-Boston, UCLA, Cal State Bakersfield, Arizona State, Babson, Fitchburg State University, Tougaloo College, Bryant University, Salem State University, and several others. In recognition of that work, the American Historical association named him the 2006 recipient of the Nancy Lyman Roelker Award for Graduate Mentoring.

His interest in teaching has led Schulman to join in a major curriculum reform project in California and to serve as the Principal Investigator on three separate collaborations between Boston University and the Boston Public Schools under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Education’s Teaching American History (TAH) grant program. Schulman has also won numerous teaching awards, including the Charles and Harriet Luckman Distinguished Teaching Award and the Eby Award for the Art of Teaching at UCLA (2003), the United Methodist Scholar/Teacher of the Year (2007), and Dean’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Education (2013).  In 2004, the Organization of American Historians appointed him to its Distinguished Lecturer program.  In 2022 he was appointed the Harold V. Harmsworth Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford. 

As much as he values teaching and original research, Schulman believes that scholars have an important role to play in public debate. In his writing and speaking, he has tried to lend a historical perspective to discussions of contemporary issues. Over the past decade, he has authored numerous opinion pieces for Time Magazine, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the International Herald Tribune, Politico, and Reuters.