Hexter, Jack H.
HEXTER, JACK H.
HEXTER, JACK H. (1910–1996), U.S. historian. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Hexter received his bachelor's degree from the University of Cincinnati (1931) and his master's (1933) and doctoral degrees from Harvard University (1937). He taught at Queens College, n.y. (1939–57) and at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri (1957–64), where for three years he served as chair of the Department of History in Arts and Sciences. After that, he was appointed professor of history at Yale University (1964–78), where he developed and directed the Yale Center for Parliamentary History and its publication program. From 1965 he was co-editor of the massive edition of The Complete Works of Thomas More, prepared at Yale. He was also general editor of The Traditions of the Western World.
Hexter's principal contributions were to 16th- and 17th-century history, a field in which he urged historians to reappraise traditional assumptions, such as the belief in a steadily rising middle class or the homogeneity of the gentry. His essays were marked by a brilliance of style that enhanced their impact. Some of the more important are assembled in Reappraisals in History (1961). Hexter's first book, The Reign of King Pym (1941), was a masterly account of the early years of the English Civil War, and it was followed by major analyses of Machiavelli and More. His More's "Utopia": The Biography of an Idea (1952) is a seminal study. His later books include Doing History (1971); The Vision of Politics on the Eve of the Reformation (1973); On Historians (1979); and After the Reformation (1980).
Upon his retirement from Yale in 1978, Hexter returned to Washington University as a Distinguished Historian in Residence and subsequently became the John M. Olin Professor of the History of Freedom until 1990. In 1986 he founded and became director of Washington University's Center for the History of Freedom, where he launched a 25-year project to create the world's first comprehensive study of the development of modern freedom. The first volume of The Making of Modern Freedom series was published in 1992.
Hexter spent much of the 1990s lobbying for the creation of a federal program to encourage Gulf War veterans to become teachers. In 1994 Congress endorsed the Troops to Teachers program which, in its first four years, helped direct more than 3,000 veterans into US classrooms.
Hexter was a member of the Educational Advisory Board of the Guggenheim Foundation and of the editorial boards of the Journal of British History and the Journal of the History of Ideas. He was president of the Conference of British Studies, and served on the board of trustees of the Danforth Foundation. His awards and honors included four Guggenheim Fellowships and two Fulbright Fellowships.
[Theodore K. Rabb /
Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)]