Jeffrey A. Engel is founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University and Professor in the Clements Department of History. A Senior Fellow of the John Goodwin Tower Center for Political Studies and formerly a Senior Fellow of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, he graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University. He additionally studied at St. Catherine's College, Oxford University, and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in American history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, before holding a John M. Olin Postdoctoral Fellow in International Security Studies at Yale University.

Having taught American history, international relations, and grand strategy at the University of Wisconsin, Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Haverford College, he served until 2012 at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government & Public Service as the Howard and Verlin Kruse ’52 Professor and Director of Programming for the Scowcroft Institute for International Affairs, receiving during that a Silver Star Award for Teaching and Mentorship, a Distinguished Teaching Award from A&M’s Association of Former Students, and a Texas A&M University System Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award. In 2012 the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations named him their Bernath Prize lecturer, while in 2019 SMU’s Residence Life students voted him their campus-wide Hope Professor of the Year.

Engel has authored or edited thirteen books on American foreign policy, including Cold War at 30, Feet: The Anglo-American Fight for Aviation Supremacy, Local Consequences of the Global Cold War, The China Diary of George H.W. Bush: The Making of a Global President, The Fall of the Berlin Wall: The Revolutionary Legacy of 1989, Into the Desert: Reflections on the Gulf War, America in the World: A History in Documents, The Four Freedoms: FDR’s Legacy of Liberty for the United States and the World, When Life Strikes the White House: Presidents and their Personal Crises, When the World Seemed New: George H.W. Bush and the End of the Cold War, Fourteen Points for the 21st Century, The Last Card: Inside George W. Bush’s Decision to Surge in Iraq (Cornell University Press, 2019), and with Jon Meacham, Peter Baker, and Timothy Naftali, Impeachment: An American History. 

A frequent media contributor on international and political affairs on venues including MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, National Public Radio, and the BBC, his scholarly and popular articles have appeared in such journals as Diplomatic History; Diplomacy & Statecraft; American Interest; USAToday; The Los Angeles Times; International Journal; The Dallas Morning News; Foreign Policy; The Houston Chronicle; Air & Space Magazine; The New York Times and The Washington Post.
 

Synopsis

The first SUU Eccles APEX presentation of the 2024/2025 season on September 19 was with Dr. Jeffrey Engel, Director of the Center for Presidential History and Professor of History at Southern Methodist University. His presentation was titled “FDR and the Four Freedoms”.

Dr. Engel is the author of multiple books covering foreign policy, including When the World Seemed New: George H.W. Bush and the End of the Cold War, Impeachment: An American History, and Rethinking Leadership and “Whole of Government” National Security Reform.

Dr. Engel began asking the audience a question, “Raise your hand if you think America is headed in the right direction right now”, and one person raised their hand. He continued with two more questions, “Raise your hand if you think we’re in a state of crisis”, and “Raise your hand if you think that we are in a moment of existential crisis”. He builds this up to the focus of his presentation, the last time America was in an existential crisis—The Great Depression.

With the existential crisis of the Great Depression, Dr. Engel argued, Americans were questioning “whether or not frankly this whole Democracy thing is still working”. Dr. Engel suggested that perhaps the world had gotten too fast, communications had gotten too fast, transportation got too fast, military operations got too fast, which he said has been a recurring theme in American history. 

This was the tone in America when Franklin D. Roosevelt took office. Understanding Roosevelt’s background—being born into wealth and privilege—is particularly important to understand how he dealt with the existential crisis America was facing. In addition to his background, Dr. Engel presents his relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt, his progressive stances in an otherwise conservative political party, his unfortunate catching of Polio which caused Franklin Roosevelt to be paralyzed from the waist down, and his subsequent ambition to show he was strong and well. 

In handling the Great Depression, Dr. Engel said FDR's goal was to “create a new sense of society to make us more secure”, referring to Social Security. Dr. Engel presented a slide that called FDR “The Juggler”. In FDR’s goal to reform and create a new sense of society, he tried almost every idea proposed to him. It proved successful, so in 1937, FDR cut spending, to balance the budget. 

The second World War tested FDR, but he understood that, “the world needs the United States”. Dr. Engel introduced “the Four Freedoms that make us fundamentally Americans”; freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Dr. Engel finished saying that “the brilliant thing I want you to take away from this lecture that what Roosevelt did to get his agenda through is not make an esoteric argument about security, is not make a philosophical argument about social security, is not talk in big numbers about how many things we’re going to build and how much we’re going to do. He instead basically pointed his finger at every American and said ‘you and your children will lose these freedoms if you do not pass this bill.”