A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Henry Commager received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago in 1928. For the next sixty-six years Commager would be employed as a college professor, first at New York University (1926-1938), then at Columbia University (1938-1956), and then finally at Amherst College (1956-1994). Commager's career is probably most noteworthy for the extraordinary amount of material he published and the extent to which he used history as a means of informing public discourse.
A strong believer in informed political activism, Commager worked hard to transcend the traditional barrier that separated scholars from the public at large. He lectured extensively, wrote hundreds of articles and columns, and frequently campaigned for political candidates whom he supported. In the early 1950s, Commager railed against the erosion of civil liberties in the name of anti-communism, making him a popular target for
Sources: "Henry Steele Commager: American Public Intellectual, 1902-1998."