John Maxwell Hamilton

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 an advisor 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 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 boards of the International Center for Journalists, of which he is treasurer, and the Lamar Corporation. With Tom Rosenstiel, he co-chairs the American Press Institute Research Advisory Group, organized to develop academic research useful to journalists. In the 1980s he established a foreign news project for the Society of Professional Journalists and for the American Society of Newspaper editors.

Hamilton is author or co-author of six books and editor of many more. Slate interviewed Hamilton to discuss his latest book on American newsgathering abroad. The book won the Goldsmith Prize, among other awards.

In 2002 he was a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations 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

Publications

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 (with co-author George Krimsky)
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, "Happy 100th birthday, information warfare: How World War I led to modern propaganda and surveillance"
8. The Washington Post, "In 2016, we're going to campaign like its 1916"
9. The Conversation, "Why you should care about the 'Third Dimension' of government information"
10. The Conversation, "The sinking of the Lusitania: how the British won American hearts and minds"