Michael J. Hogan (born 1943) is an American
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...
who served as president of the
University of Connecticut
The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university system with its main campus in Storrs, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1881 as the Storrs Agricultural School, named after two benefactors. In 1893, ...
(2007–2010) and president of the
University of Illinois System (2010–2012). He subsequently became a distinguished professor of history at the
University of Illinois at Springfield
The University of Illinois Springfield (UIS) is a public university in Springfield, Illinois, United States. The university was established by the Illinois General Assembly in 1969 as Sangamon State University with a focus on post-graduate edu ...
.
Early life and education
Born and raised in
Waterloo, Iowa
Waterloo is a city in and the county seat of Black Hawk County, Iowa, Black Hawk County, Iowa, United States. As of the 2020 United States census the population was 67,314, making it the List of cities in Iowa, eighth-most populous city in the st ...
, Hogan earned his B.A. degree at the
University of Northern Iowa
The University of Northern Iowa (UNI) is a public university in Cedar Falls, Iowa, United States. UNI offers more than 90 majors across five colleges. The fall 2024 total enrollment was 9,283 students.
The university was initially founded in 1 ...
, where he majored in English with minors in history and classics. He received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa (U of I, UIowa, or Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized int ...
.
Academic career
Teaching
Hogan's first university faculty positions were at
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public university, public research university in Stony Brook, New York, United States, on Long Island. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is on ...
and at the
University of Texas, Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 students as of fall 20 ...
. He then taught at
Miami University
Miami University (informally Miami of Ohio or simply Miami) is a public university, public research university in Oxford, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1809, it is the second-oldest List of colleges and universities in Ohio, university in Ohi ...
for nine years before accepting what would turn out to be his last full-time teaching position at
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...
, in 1986. In 1993, Hogan was elevated to be the chair of the Department of History at Ohio State, which position he held until he moved into the administrative side of academia.
Administration
In 1999, Hogan was made dean of the College of Humanities at Ohio State, and in 2001, he was given an additional position as executive dean of the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences. During his tenure in that position, the position of executive dean evolved into a separate free-standing office with oversight of five colleges and forty-one departments.
In 2003, Hogan accepted a position as Executive Vice President and Provost of the
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa (U of I, UIowa, or Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized int ...
. While in Iowa City, he also held the position of F. Wendell Miller Professor of History.
University of Connecticut
On September 14, 2007, Hogan became the 14th president of the
University of Connecticut
The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university system with its main campus in Storrs, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1881 as the Storrs Agricultural School, named after two benefactors. In 1893, ...
, succeeding
Philip E. Austin. As president, Hogan helped develop a $362 million plan to renovate and expand the
University of Connecticut Health Center
UConn Health is a healthcare system and hospital, and branch of the University of Connecticut that oversees clinical care, advanced biomedical research, and academic education in medicine. The system is funded directly by the State of Connecticut ...
. Research spending grew by 25%, and academics and enrollment continued to pursue the upward trajectory established under President Austin.
Notwithstanding these successes, Hogan's tenure was brief and controversial. He refused to move into the official president's house in
Storrs because his wife, Virginia, allegedly had a severe allergic reaction to mold and mildew there. So UConn paid $49,000
to rent and renovate a five-bedroom house near campus. He ordered a $475,000 renovation of the university's main administrative building, where he worked, and he hosted a costly inauguration ceremony for himself, complete with fireworks. Hogan even spent $3,500 of the university's money to have a number of life-size cardboard cutouts of himself placed around campus. Faculty and state legislators complained that he behaved autocratically.
On May 11, 2010, Hogan was selected to succeed
B. Joseph White as president of the
University of Illinois System, and he resigned his position as president of the
University of Connecticut
The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university system with its main campus in Storrs, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1881 as the Storrs Agricultural School, named after two benefactors. In 1893, ...
, effective June 30. Governor
Jodi Rell
Mary Carolyn Rell (née Reavis; June 16, 1946 – November 20, 2024), known as M. Jodi Rell, was an American politician who served as the 87th governor of Connecticut from 2004 to 2011. Rell also had served as the state's 105th lieutenant gove ...
was among many UConn supporters who complained about the abruptness of Hogan's departure, less than three years after taking the job. Hogan's was the briefest tenure of any UConn president since 1930.
University of Illinois System
President Hogan's tenure at the University of Illinois was filled with problems. At the start of his position at Illinois, Hogan has been criticized for big salary raises to the members of his administrative team at the time of severe budget problems for the university and the state. Hogan's starting salary at the University of Illinois was $620,000, which is $170,000 more than the salary of his immediate predecessor, B. Joseph White.
[University Of Illinois President's Assistant To Make $195K](_blank)
''Huffington Post
''HuffPost'' (''The Huffington Post'' until 2017, itself often abbreviated as ''HPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and covers ...
'', July 21, 2010. Accessed March 26, 2012 Hogan also brought as his chief-of-staff, Lisa Troyer, who was given the initial salary of $195,000 per year, compared to the $107,500 salary of the executive assistant to Joseph White.
Troyer had previously worked for Hogan both at Iowa and Connecticut.
In the summer of 2011, a university law employee was dismissed following evidence that he changed the grades of several students to make the U of I rank higher in the national standards.
During his time at Illinois, Hogan had an increasingly difficult relationship with the University of Illinois faculty, particularly at the Urbana-Champaign and Chicago campuses. Hogan spearheaded several initiatives that increased the powers of the University of Illinois President in relation to the three campuses and their chancellors, and increased the role of central university administration, in particular introducing a new vice-president position and expanding the role of several others. These changes were met with significant criticism by the faculty and by campus-level administrators. In April 2011, Sally Jackson, an Associate Provost at the Urbana-Champaign campus, resigned her position as the campus chief information officer, in protest of President Hogan's plans to make the chief information officers of the three University of Illinois campuses directly subordinate to the central university administration rather than to the campus provosts.
Hogan has been credited with putting together a university budget for the 2011–12 academic year that provided the first program of merit-based salary raises for the faculty since 2008.
In 2011 Hogan put forward a plan that would centralize many aspects of the admission process to the University of Illinois three campuses at the hands of the central university administration. Various aspects of the plan were criticized by the university faculty, particularly by the Senate of the Urbana-Champaign campus.
[University of Illinois president pressuring campus leaders, emails show](_blank)
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily nonprofit newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has long held the second largest circulation among Chicago newspaper ...
, February 15, 2012 Hogan was also criticized by the faculty by exerting what they saw as undue pressure on the campus chancellors to support his plan.
His enrollment initiative plan was one that drew a lot of criticism from the university faculty. The plan consisted of changing the way in which students are admitted to the university, and possibly reverting to a common application. Much of the criticism circled around Hogan's initiative to have a common admission policy for all three campuses, even though the demographics of each campus are quite different. Hogan's initiative was never approved.
In December 2011, Lisa Troyer, who had been President Hogan's Chief-of-Staff, was accused of sending to the members of the university Senates conference committee an e-mail in support of Hogan's proposal with the signature at the end of the e-mail indicating that it was sent by a university Senator. Troyer denied the accusations, claiming that her email account was hacked. In January 2012, a subsequent investigation, conducted at the university's request by an external firm, concluded that the e-mail in question was indeed sent from Troyer's computer and that that computer had not been compromised.
Troyer then resigned as Hogan's Chief-of-Staff and later accepted a faculty position on February 6 in the psychology department on the Urbana-Champaign Campus. Troyer continued to maintain that she was innocent and that she did not send the fake e-mail.
Following the e-mail scandal, Hogan's leadership style came under increasing criticism by the university faculty.
In late February 2012 a group of 130 leading faculty members at the Urbana-Champaign campus, including most endowed chairs, submitted a letter to the Board of Trustees calling for Hogan's quick removal as the University of Illinois President; this letter was followed by a similar letter from more than 100 distinguished professors in mid-March. These letters were the result of emails being released showing continued pressure from Hogan to the new Urbana-Champaign Chancellor, Phyllis Wise. In the released emails, Hogan indicated that he expected Wise to be an advocate for the Board of Trustees, rather than the Urbana-Champaign Campus directly and was disappointed that she did not display the type of leadership that he was looking for.
On March 22, 2012, Hogan resigned his position as President of the University of Illinois, effective July 1, 2012.
Books authored or edited
A specialist in the history of
American diplomacy, Hogan is the author or editor of nine books and a host of scholarly articles and essays. His publications include ''Informal Entente: The Private Structure of Cooperation in Anglo-America Economic Diplomacy, 1918–1928'' (University of Missouri, 1977) and ''
The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947–1952'' (Cambridge, 1987), which received the Stuart L. Bernath Book Award of the
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) was founded in 1967 in order to "promote excellence in research and teaching of American foreign relations history and to facilitate professional collaboration among scholars and s ...
, the 1988
George Louis Beer Prize of the
American Historical Association
The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world, claiming over 10,000 members. Founded in 1884, AHA works to protect academic free ...
,
and the Quincy Wright Prize of the
International Studies Association
The International Studies Association (ISA) is a US-based professional association for scholars and practitioners in the field of International relations, international studies. Founded in 1959, ISA has been headquartered at the University of Con ...
. His most recent books include ''A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954'' (Cambridge, 1998), and his edited volume, ''Paths to Power: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations to 1941'' (Cambridge, 2000). He has worked on a history of his discipline, under contract with the University of Michigan Press, and on a book dealing with the
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
in American history and memory.
In 2017, his book on
President Kennedy titled ''The Afterlife of John F. Kennedy: A Biography'' was published by Cambridge University Press.
Scholarship and service
President Hogan served for 15 years as editor of ''
Diplomatic History'', an international journal of record for specialists in diplomacy and foreign affairs. He has served on numerous editorial boards and as vice president and president of the
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) was founded in 1967 in order to "promote excellence in research and teaching of American foreign relations history and to facilitate professional collaboration among scholars and s ...
. He has also served on the U.S. Department of State Advisory Committee on Diplomatic Documentation, which he chaired for three years, and has worked as a consultant for a number of BBC documentaries and for the PBS special ''
George C. Marshall
George Catlett Marshall Jr. (31 December 1880 – 16 October 1959) was an American army officer and statesman. He rose through the United States Army to become Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army under presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. ...
and the American Century''.
President Hogan has been a fellow at the
Harry S. Truman Library Institute and the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS) or Wilson Center is a Washington, D.C.–based think tank
A think tank, or public policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topi ...
, and has served as Louis Martin Sears Distinguished Professor of History at
Purdue University
Purdue University is a Public university#United States, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded ...
. His scholarship has been recognized by the
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) was founded in 1967 in order to "promote excellence in research and teaching of American foreign relations history and to facilitate professional collaboration among scholars and s ...
, which awarded him the Bernath Lecture Prize in 1984, and by
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...
, which presented him with its Distinguished Scholar Award in 1990, the highest award for scholarly distinction conferred on members of the faculty.
Personal life
Hogan and his wife Virginia have four adult children.
Works
*
Informal Entente: The Private Structure of Cooperation in Anglo-America Economic Diplomacy, 1918–1928'' (1977)
*
The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947–1952', (1987)
*
A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954', (1998)
* ''Paths to Power: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations to 1941'' (2000).
*
The Afterlife of John F. Kennedy: A Biography', (2017)
References
External links
University of Connecticut, President's Office Records Series XIX: Michael Hogan, 2007-2010
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hogan, Michael
1943 births
Living people
21st-century American historians
21st-century American male writers
Leaders of the University of Illinois
Miami University faculty
Ohio State University faculty
People from Waterloo, Iowa
Presidents of the University of Connecticut
Stony Brook University faculty
University of Iowa alumni
University of Iowa faculty
University of Northern Iowa alumni
University of Texas at Austin faculty
Historians from Iowa
American male non-fiction writers
Presidents of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations