William Michael Schmidli is a U.S. foreign relations historian, and his research focuses on human rights, democracy promotion, and the significance of war and militarization in modern U.S. history. He completed his doctoral degree in the Department of History at Cornell University in 2010.

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Research

A U.S. foreign relations historian, Schmidli's research interests include human rights history, democracy promotion, and the significance of war and militarization in modern U.S. history.  His first book, The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere: Human Rights and U.S. Cold War Policy toward Argentina (Cornell, 2013), is a study of human rights in U.S. policy toward the Argentine military dictatorship and was listed as one of the best books of the year by Foreign Affairs magazine.  His second book, Freedom on the Offensive: Human Rights, Democracy Promotion, and U.S. Interventionism in the late Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022), examines the emergence of democracy promotion as a defining feature of U.S. foreign policy in the 1980s.  Awarded the William M. LeoGrande Award for the best book on U.S.-Latin American relations, Freedom on the Offensive illuminates how the Ronald Reagan administration used the discourse of democracy promotion—as the centerpiece of the administration’s human rights policy—to justify Cold War interventionism against the leftist government of Nicaragua.  Schmidli is also co-editor of The Reagan Administration, the Cold War, and the Transition to Democracy Promotion (Palgrave Macmillan 2019), and has published articles in Diplomatic History, Cold War History, and Diplomacy and Statecraft.  Schmidli has received research fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies.  His current research project is a study of how war shaped the structures, practices, and values of U.S. democracy from the Second World War to the War on Terror.  

Grants and awards

• William M. LeoGrande Award and Prize for the best book on U.S.-Latin American relations (2022)
• Individual Fellow, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Fall 2021)
• Core Fellow, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Helsinki, Finland, 2016-2017
• Member, School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, 2014-2015

Selected publications

Freedom on the Offensive: Human Rights, Democracy Promotion, and U.S. Interventionism in the late Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022).

“Rockin’ to Free the World?: Amnesty International’s Benefit Concert Tours, 1986-88” Diplomatic History, Volume 45, Issue 4, September 2021, 688–713. 

W. M. Schmidli and Robert Pee, eds., The Reagan Administration, the Cold War, and the Transition to Democracy Promotion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

“Reagan’s Project Democracy and the U.S. Intervention in Nicaragua,” in the Jonathan Hunt and Simon Miles, eds., Reagan’s World: The Cold War and Beyond (forthcoming).

The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere: Human Rights and U.S. Cold War Policy toward Argentina (Cornell University Press, 2013).

“Robert C. Hill and the Cold War in Latin America” in Diplomats at War: The American Experience (Martin Nijhoff Press, 2013), 265-283.

“Human Rights and the Cold War: the Campaign to Halt the Argentine Dirty War,” Cold War History, Vol 12, No 2 (May 2012), 345-365.

“‘The Most Sophisticated Intervention We Have Seen’:The Carter Administration and the Nicaraguan Crisis, 1978-1979,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 23, Issue 1 (2012), 66-86.

“Institutionalizing Human Rights in United States Foreign Policy: U.S.-Argentine Relations, 1976-1980,” Diplomatic History Vol. 35, No. 2 (April 2011), 351-377. 

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