American National Biography Online


Baxter, James Phinney, III (15 Feb. 1893-17 June 1975),  historian,
was born in Portland, Maine, the son of James Phinney Baxter,
Jr., a businessman, and Nelly Furbish Carpenter. He was educated
in Portland public schools, finishing his last year of high school
at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Baxter attended
Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he majored
in history and participated in debate and student government.
He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated summa cum laude in 1914.

  Baxter worked for a year for the Industrial Finance Corporation,
a New York banking firm, before contracting tuberculosis. While
recuperating in Colorado he met and married Anne Holden Strang
in 1919; the Baxters had three children. Always interested in
the academic field of history, Baxter determined to make it his
career. He began his graduate study in Colorado, earning his
M.A. in absentia from Williams in 1921. Baxter then taught at
Colorado College for one year before continuing his graduate
work at Harvard University, where he was awarded a second M.A.
in 1923. In 1924 Baxter was granted the John Harvard Fellowship,
which allowed him a year of travel.

  In 1925 he began teaching at Harvard, earning his Ph.D. in diplomatic
history and international relations with highest honors in 1926.
His thesis, "The Introduction of the Ironclad Warship," won the
Toppan Prize for best Harvard Ph.D. thesis of the year and was
published in 1933. Baxter taught diplomatic history, naval history,
and international relations at Harvard, and he wrote numerous
articles on naval and diplomatic history, earning an international
reputation in those fields. In 1931 he was promoted to associate
professor and was appointed the first master of Adams House,
a residence hall modeled after the traditional English college.
He was promoted again in 1936 to full professor. During his years
at Harvard, Baxter also served as a visiting lecturer at Lowell
Institute, the Naval War College, and Cambridge University. He
later lectured at the National War College, the Air War College,
and the Canadian Defense College. In addition Baxter chaired
the Social Science Research Council's committee on social science
personnel in 1932. That committee investigated the loss of outstanding
students to fields other than teaching and research. He also
served on another SSRC committee that studied the poor quality
of social science teaching on the secondary school level.

  Baxter was offered the presidency of Williams College in 1934.
Wishing to continue the work of creating Adams House he declined,
but he accepted an appointment as a member of the board of trustees.
In 1937 he was offered the presidency again, accepted, and served
for twenty-four years. Baxter saw himself primarily as a teacher
and continued to teach part time while president. He argued that
"vital teaching is the essential thing" and felt a strong faculty
was the key to a quality education. As president he quadrupled
the college budget for instruction and improved tenure and sabbatical
leave policies. Baxter was also a strong supporter of academic
freedom, taking stands in defense of two controversial Williams
faculty in the post-World War II period.

  Baxter rose to national prominence after becoming president.
He spoke out against neutrality legislation in his inaugural
address in 1937 and advocated U.S. intervention in the European
war in a commencement address in 1941. In the same year William
J. Donovan asked him to organize the research and analysis section
of the Office of the Coordinator of Information (later the Office
of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the Central Intelligence
Agency). Baxter recruited experts on history, geography, economics,
and politics to gather information. In 1942 he took a leave of
absence from Williams in order to serve as deputy director of
the OSS on a part-time basis. The following year Baxter moved
to Vannevar Bush's Office of Scientific Research and Development
as historian, remaining there on an uncompensated, part-time
basis until 1946. In 1945 Baxter began work on the official history
of the OSRD, writing twenty-two of the twenty-eight chapters
and taking courses on electricity and electronics to prepare
himself for the task. The resultant book, Scientists against
Time, won the Pulitzer Prize in history for 1946.

  Baxter advised the federal government on education during and
after the war. In 1942 he headed the Commission on Liberal Education
of the Association of American Colleges, which recommended programs
for the wartime and postwar education of military personnel.
>From 1945 to 1946 he served on a navy board to plan naval officer
procurement. During these same years, Baxter was president of
the Association of American Colleges and of the Society of American
Historians. He also was a member of the American Council on Education
and the Harvard Board of Overseers, a fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, chair of the Board of Visitors
and an education adviser to the Academic Board at West Point,
and a member of the historical advisory committee of the Atomic
Energy Commission. He served as a trustee of Radcliffe College,
Phillips Andover Academy, the American Military Institute, and
the World Peace Foundation.

  Baxter was an active member of the Republican party and a leader
in the Eisenhower for president movement. Dwight D. Eisenhower
appointed him to the Gaither Commission to study the Cold War
in the 1950s. Baxter, concerned about the expansion of the Soviet
Union, urged an American military buildup. In testimony before
a 1960 Senate hearing he proposed the strengthening of conventional
forces to wage limited warfare. Baxter retired as president of
Williams College in 1960 and the next year moved to New York
City to become the first senior fellow of the Council on Foreign
Relations. However, he returned to Williamstown when his health
began to fail in 1965. He died there ten years later after living
for several years in a nursing home.

  Baxter successfully combined the roles of historian, educator,
and government leader. He began his professional life as a historian
and continued to research and write throughout his career, earning
one of the most prestigious awards in the field, the Pulitzer
Prize in history. Baxter considered teaching to be the most important
role of an academic. He continued to teach while serving as president
of Williams and strengthened support for instruction. Baxter
used his presidency to speak out on national and international
issues, and he became an adviser to the Roosevelt, Truman, and
Eisenhower administrations on intelligence, education, and foreign
relations.


  Bibliography

  Baxter's presidential papers, including some material relating
to his historical research, are part of the Records of the Williams
College President's Office in the Archives and Special Collections
of the Williams College Library. Baxter's classmate and Williams
College trustee William O. Wyckoff wrote a brief, retrospective
article for the Williams Alumni Review (July 1960) on the occasion
of Baxter's retirement as president, and the issue contains other
material on Baxter's years at the college. An article in the
Washington Post, 19 June 1975, at the time of Baxter's death
provides a summary of his life and career.

  Joel Webb Eastman


    Citation:
  Joel Webb Eastman. "Baxter, James Phinney, III";
http://www.anb.org/articles/09/09-00970.html;
American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.
Access Date:
  Copyright (c) 2000 American Council of Learned Societies.  Published
by  Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.


      From American National Biography, published by Oxford University
      Press, Inc., copyright 2000 American Council of Learned Societies.
      Further information is available at http://www.anb.org.

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