S0712 20th Century Leaders: Private Lives and Public Careers

This course will explore the relationship between private lives and public politics, assessing through a series of case studies how the individual backgrounds of a series of world leaders, in both the United States and the world at large, helped to shape the politics and policies they embraced.
While not a course in “psycho-history,” it will test the hypothesis that how individual leaders are raised and mature, and how they respond to adversity and crisis, plays a significant role in the political careers they pursue and in their style of leadership.
The course will examine eight political leaders in the United States and five from other countries. These will include, from the United States, Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald W. Reagan, and Bill and Hillary Clinton, while from elsewhere, the course will study Nelson Mandela, Mao Zedong, Mahatma Gandhi, Adolph Hitler and Winston Churchill.