Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones (born 28 July 1942) is professor of American history emeritus and an honorary fellow in History at the University of Edinburgh (School of History, Classics and Archaeology), Scotland. He is an authority on American intelligence history, having written two American intelligence history surveys and studies of the CIA and FBI. He has also written books on women and American foreign policy, America and the Vietnam War, and American labor history.[1]

Biography

Jeffreys-Jones was born in Carmarthen and grew up speaking Welsh in Harlech. He attended the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth (now Aberystwyth University), taking a B.A. in 1963. During 1964-65 he pursued graduate study at the University of Michigan and, during 1965-66, at Harvard University. In 1967 Jeffreys-Jones took his PhD in American history at Cambridge University in England.[2] He stated in 2020:

I originally approached American history after following a left wing trajectory that billed the United States as arch-conservative, arch-capitalist, and hostile to democratic socialism and world peace.[3]

He taught as a tutor of history at Harvard's Kirkland House, at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University, and for the Transport and General Workers Union before becoming a lecturer in history at the University of Edinburgh in 1967. After rising through the academic ranks --- lecturer and reader --- by 1997 he became the University's second professor of American history, or its first exclusive professor of American history, given that in 1965 George "Sam" Shepperson had become "Professor of Commonwealth and American History." During his career, Jeffreys-Jones held visiting appointments, including: a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Charles Warren Center for the Study of American History at Harvard (1971–72); a Stipendiary at the JFK Institut für Nordamerikastudien, Berlin, Germany; and a Canadian Commonwealth Fellowship and Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto.[4] Jeffreys-Jones has directed postgraduate students, master's and doctoral. Jeffreys-Jones was one of the founders of the Scottish Association for the Study of America.

Research and publications

Jeffreys-Jones began his scholarly pursuits examining the issue of violence in American industry during the Progressive Era, including the use of private detective agencies in labor disputes. Building on his work involving private detectives who collected intelligence for big business, Jeffreys-Jones then shifted his focus during the late 1970s to examine American secret intelligence, a time when the field began to blossom with the release of historical records and revelations of American intelligence agencies' activities. Jeffreys-Jones published an historical survey examining the development of American intelligence from the establishment of the Secret Service in the 19th Century to the CIA in the 20th. This was followed by one of the first academic histories of the CIA at a time when most studies were undocumented, a book examining American intelligence and exaggeration, and a history of the FBI in which Jeffreys-Jones traced its origins to the 19th century and the federal government's pursuit of the Ku Klux Klan.

More recent books by Jeffreys-Jones traced the history of British-American intelligence cooperation and the recent rise of European Union intelligence, and analyzed the achievements of the American left since 1900. The latter book was the winner of the Neustadt Prize for the best British book on American politics published in 2013. His next book, We Know all About You, examined the history of surveillance in the USA and UK, arguing that we have neglected intrusions by the private sector. His latest work is The Nazi Spy Ring in America, published in the UK as Ring of Spies. According to The Economist “an entertaining take that doubles as an important work of scholarship,” it suggests that the 1938 spy trial precipitated a flight from neutrality. Jeffreys-Jones is currently writing a new history of the CIA.[5]

Published works
  • The Nazi Spy Ring in America: Hitler’s Agents, the FBI, and the Case that Stirred a Nation (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2020).
  • Ring of Spies: How MI5 and the FBI Brought Down the Nazis in America (Cheltenham: The History Press, 2020).
  • We Know All About You: The Story of Surveillance in Britain and America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)
  • The American Left: Its Impact on Politics and Society since 1900 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013)
  • In Spies We Trust: The Story of Western Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)
  • The FBI: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
  • Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).
  • Peace Now! American Society and the Ending of the Vietnam War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
  • Changing Differences: Women and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy, 1917-1994 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995).
  • The CIA and American Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
  • Violence and Reform in American History (New York: New Viewpoints, 1978).
  • American Espionage: From Secret Service to CIA (New York: Free Press, 1977).

Articles and contributions to books since 2015
  • “A Forgotten Scandal: How the Nazi Spy Case Affected American Neutrality and German Diplomatic Opinion,” Passport: The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review (September 2020). pp. 45–48.
  • “Leon Turrou: The Greatest Detective of Them All?” Strand Magazine, 10 September 2020: https://strandmag.com/leon-turrou-the-greatest-detective-of-them-all/
  • “Leon Turrou and the Nazi Spy Ring in America,” The Historian, 82/2 (2020). pp. 138–55.
* “Nazispionnen in Washington, 1937”, Geschiedenis Magazine, 55/5 (July/August 2020): 20-24.
* “What Burleson and Orwell Overlooked: Private Security Provision in the United States and the United Kingdom,” in David Churchill, Dolores Janiewski and Pieter Leloup, eds., Private Security and Modern States: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2020). pp. 214–31.

Notes
  1. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, "Learning the Scholar’s Craft: A Journey with Enid Jones, John Hope Franklin, Sir Denis Brogan, Sidney Fine, and Oscar Handlin" H-Diplo Essay 221 (2020) online
  2. "Staff profiles: Professor Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones". University of Edinburgh. Retrieved 30 June 2013.
  3. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, "Learning the Scholar’s Craft: A Journey with Enid Jones, John Hope Franklin, Sir Denis Brogan, Sidney Fine, and Oscar Handlin" H-Diplo Essay 221 (2020) online
  4. Source: Contemporary Authors Online, Thomson Gale, 2006
  5. Review of The Nazi Spy Ring in America and Ring of Spies in The Economist, 15 August 2020.

Further reading
  • Daskal, Jennifer. "Public and Private Eyes" Foreign Affairs. (Nov/Dec 2017), 96#6, pp 139–143; review of We Know All About You.
  • Morello, John, "We Know All About You: The Story of Surveillance in Britain and America. By Rhodri Jeffreys‐Jones, " History (Jan 2020) 105#364, pp 173–175.
  • O'Reilly, Kenneth. review of The FBI: A History, in American Historical Review (June, 2008), p. 865.
  • "Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones." Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors (Gale, 2018). online
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