Beverly Gage, newly named as the Brady-Johnson Professor of Grand Strategy, is a historian of 20th-century American politics and society. Her appointment will be effective July 1.
Also on July 1, Gage will assume her new post as director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy. The program seeks to promote effective leadership through the study of history and the humanities. It encourages understanding of historical and contemporary global challenges, and develops students’ capacity for strategic thinking and common-sense problem solving.
Gage teaches courses on 20th-century American politics and society, with a focus on liberalism and conservatism, communism and anticommunism, and the craft of historical writing. Her first book, “The Day Wall Street Exploded,” explored the story of the 1920 bombing of Wall Street and the history of early 20th-century terrorism. She is currently writing a biography of former F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover, titled “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the American Century,” to be published in 2018.
The Yale professor writes for general media publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, and Slate. She has published scholarly articles and reviews in The Journal of American History, The American Historical Review, The Journal of Policy History, Reviews in American History, and other journals. She appears frequently on the “PBS NewsHour,” among other outlets, as a historical and political commentator.
A 1994 graduate of Yale College, Gage earned a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. In 2009, she received the Sarai Ribicoff Award for teaching excellence in Yale College. She is a Distinguished Lecturer of the Organization of American Historians and an elected member of the Society of American Historians. In 2015, she was elected to serve as the chair of Yale’s inaugural Senate of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.