Newswise — ROLLA, Mo. –Friday, Nov. 22, 2013, marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Two historians and a political scientist from Missouri University of Science and Technology have studied the 35th president and are available to share their perspectives with the media.
Topics include:
Kennedy’s foreign policy
Dr. Larry D. Gragg and Dr. Michael E. Meagher co-authored a book titled John F. Kennedy, A Biography that examines the former president’s life and political career with an emphasis on his foreign policy. The book discusses Kennedy’s tragic miscalculations in the Bay of Pigs and his doubts about democracy, which Meagher says Kennedy first expressed as a Harvard undergraduate, but which continued during his presidency. It also delves into Kennedy’s willingness to use fear-based tactics to manipulate the American people during the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Meagher holds a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. In 1993, he joined the faculty at Missouri S&T, where he teaches courses in American government, American presidency, American diplomatic history, contemporary political thought and public policy. Gragg is Curator’s Teaching Professor and chair of the history and political science department at Missouri S&T. A member of the faculty since 1977, he holds a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and teaches courses in colonial and revolutionary America.
Kennedy assassination controversy
Dr. Patrick J. Huber published a book about Father Oscar L. Huber, the Roman Catholic priest who administered last rites to Kennedy at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. It was widely reported that the priest was the first to leak news of Kennedy’s death to the media before the official White House announcement. Patrick Huber, a distant cousin of Father Huber, says the priest denied the allegations and spent the rest of his life trying to set the record straight.
Huber, who earned a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, joined the S&T faculty in 2000. He specializes in Missouri history, the American South and 20th century U.S. history.
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