John Maxwell Hamilton


John Maxwell Hamilton has been a journalist, public servant, and educator. He is the Hopkins P. Breazeale Professor in Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University, a Global Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., and a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Experience

As a journalist, Hamilton reported in the United States and abroad for the Milwaukee Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, and ABC radio. He was a longtime commentator for MarketPlace, broadcast nationally by Public Radio International. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and The Nation, among other publications.
In government, Hamilton oversaw nuclear non-proliferation issues for the House Foreign Affairs Committee, served in the State Department during the Carter administration as special assistant to the head of the U.S. foreign aid program in Asia, and managed a World Bank program to educate Americans about economic development. He served in Vietnam as a Marine Corps platoon commander and in Okinawa as a reconnaissance company commander.
In his twenty years as an LSU administrator, Hamilton was founding dean of the Manship School and the university's executive vice-chancellor and provost. While he was dean, the Manship School created a doctoral degree devoted to media and public affairs, and launched the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs and a related opinion research facility. The number of majors more than doubled as did the size of the faculty and staff; the school's endowment more than sextupled.
Hamilton serves on the board of the International Center for Journalists, of which he is treasurer. With Tom Rosenstiel, he co-chairs the American Press Institute Research Advisory Group, organized to develop academic research useful to journalists.
In the 1980s, Hamilton established a foreign news project for the Society of Professional Journalists and for the American Society of Newspaper editors. The National Journal said in the 1980s that Hamilton shaped public opinion about the complexity of U.S.-Third World relations probably "more than any other single journalist." For many years, Hamilton was on the board of the Lamar Corporation, the largest outdoor advertising company in the United States.
Hamilton is author or co-author of seven books and editor of many more. His most recent book, appearing in 2020, is Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda. Slate interviewed Hamilton to discuss his book on American newsgathering abroad, Journalism's Roving Eye. The book won the Goldsmith Prize, among other awards.
Hamilton received the Freedom Forum's Administrator of the Year Award in 2003. He has received funding from the Carnegie and Ford Foundations, among others. In 2002 he was a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He has served twice as a Pulitzer Prize jurist. Hamilton is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, the Overseas Press Club, and the Metropolitan Club of Washington.
Hamilton earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from Marquette and Boston University respectively, and a doctorate in American Civilization from George Washington University.

Achievements

  1. Main Street America and the Third World
  2. Entangling Alliances: How The Third World Shapes our Lives
  3. Edgar Snow: A Biography
  4. Hold the Press: The Inside Story on Newspapers
  5. Casanova Was a Book Lover: And Other Naked Truths and Provocative Curiosities About the Writing, Selling, and Reading of Books
  6. Journalism's Roving Eye: A History of American Newsgathering Abroad
  7. The Washington Post,
  8. The Washington Post,
  9. The Conversation,
  10. The Conversation,
  11. The New York Times,