Patrick Vaughan (born 1965) is a professor at
Jagiellonian University
The Jagiellonian University (, UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by Casimir III the Great, King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and one of the List of oldest universities in con ...
in
Kraków
, officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...
,
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...
. He was the co-founder of the
MA program in Transatlantic Studies, Jagiellonian University.
Early life
Vaughan was born in
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...
,
Washington. Vaughan's father was a member of
Al Brightman's
Seattle University nationally ranked basketball teams led by the “
Gold Dust Twins
The Gold Dust Twins, the trademark for Fairbank's Gold Dust washing powder products, appeared in printed media as early as 1892. "Goldie" and "Dusty", the original Gold Dust Twins, were often shown doing household chores together. In general use ...
” of Johnny and Ed O’Brien. In 1952 that team defeated the
Harlem Globetrotters
The Harlem Globetrotters is an American Exhibition game, exhibition basketball team. They combine athleticism, theater, entertainment, and comedy in their style of play. Over the years, they have played more than 26,000 exhibition games in 124 ...
in what has been called the most memorable event in Seattle sports history. Vaughan's father missed that game due to military service and heard the news while serving on an aircraft carrier in the
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...
. His uncle Daniel Vaughan also served in the
Navy
A navy, naval force, military maritime fleet, war navy, or maritime force is the military branch, branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral z ...
during which he married Courtney Sprague, niece of
F. Scott Fitzgerald and the daughter of Admiral
Clifton Sprague, hero of the WW2 Battle off Samar, which the author of
The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors has called "the greatest upset in the history of naval warfare".
Vaughan spent his childhood years in the small petroleum town of
Oildale, California. In grade school the children's novels ''
Escape from Warsaw'' and ''
The Endless Steppe
''The Endless Steppe'' (1968) is a memoir of survival by Esther Hautzig, describing her exile with her immediate family to Siberia during World War II.
Kirkus Reviews granted it a Kirkus Star,
which "marks books of exceptional merit".
Summary
...
'' provided an early interest in the history of Poland. He gained an informal education listening stories told by Los Angeles sportscasters Vin Scully and Chick Hearn. Vaughan gained an early lesson in the power of positive thinking as a
Little League catcher taking pitches from teammate
Patrick Lencioni who in later years became a best-selling author in
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...
. Vaughan's older sister could not compete because there were no girls' sports programs; she became an early
Title IX
Title IX is a landmark federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receiv ...
pioneer and set a high-school girl's long-jump record that has stood for over forty years.
In 1980, Vaughan's father accepted a new job in a
geothermal energy
Geothermal energy is thermal energy extracted from the crust (geology), crust. It combines energy from the formation of the planet and from radioactive decay. Geothermal energy has been exploited as a source of heat and/or electric power for m ...
company north of
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
. In
Santa Rosa, Vaughan became an All-Northern California selection on the first of Coach Tom Bon Figli's Cardinal Newman basketball teams.
He was recruited by
Bill Trumbo and played summer league for
Steve Patterson who was the
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...
center after
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ( ; born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. , April 16, 1947) is an American former basketball player. He played professionally for 20 seasons for the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers in the National Basketball Associatio ...
and before
Bill Walton
William Theodore Walton III (November 5, 1952 – May 27, 2024) was an American basketball player and television Sports commentator, sportscaster. He played college basketball, collegiately for the UCLA Bruins men's basketball, UCLA Bruins an ...
. Patterson emphasized the teaching of
John Wooden
John Robert Wooden (October 14, 1910 – June 4, 2010) was an American basketball coach and player. Nicknamed "the Wizard of Westwood", he won ten National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, nati ...
, especially the idea that college basketball is four years of your life-so you better know how to do something else.
Patrick Vaughan studied History and Business Organization at
California State University, Chico. He hosted a popular morning show on the influential KCSC radio station. ''
Spin'' magazine selected it as the best
alternative radio station in the United States. KCSC was a cable station, allowing it a creative air play while serving as a midpoint for then-obscure bands such as the
Smashing Pumpkins
The Smashing Pumpkins (also simply known as Smashing Pumpkins) are an American alternative rock band formed in Chicago in 1988 by frontman and guitarist Billy Corgan, guitarist James Iha, bassist D'arcy Wretzky and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin. ...
and
Nirvana
Nirvana, in the Indian religions (Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism), is the concept of an individual's passions being extinguished as the ultimate state of salvation, release, or liberation from suffering ('' duḥkha'') and from the ...
traveling between
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...
and San Francisco. KCSC staff member Amy Finnerty (host of the show after Vaughan) has been credited with successfully pushing Nirvana's "
Smells Like Teen Spirit
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" is a song by the American rock band Nirvana. It is the opening track and lead single from the band's second album, '' Nevermind'' (1991), released on DGC Records. Having sold over 13 million units worldwide, it i ...
" video on
MTV
MTV (an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable television television channel, channel and the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group sub-division of the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global. Launched on ...
executives, helping to spark the popular
grunge
Grunge (sometimes referred to as the Seattle sound) is an alternative rock Music genre, genre and subculture that emerged during the in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington, particularly in Seattle and Music of Olympia, Washington, O ...
music era of the 1990s.
The writer
Matt Olmstead hired Vaughan to write a weekly column for the university newspaper. That column achieved a popular campus following and was awarded for excellence by the California Intercollegiate Press Association. Olmstead went on to successful career as a Hollywood producer for ''
Prison Break
''Prison Break'' is an American Crime film#Crime drama, crime Drama (film and television), drama television series created by Paul Scheuring for Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox. The series revolves around two brothers: Lincoln Burrows (Dominic P ...
'' and ''
NYPD Blue
''NYPD Blue'' is an American police procedural television series set in New York City, exploring the struggles of the fictional 15th Precinct detective squad in Manhattan. Each episode typically intertwines several plots involving an ensemble ca ...
'' where he would insert Vaughan's name into his scripts. In one episode, Detective
Andy Sipowicz (
Dennis Franz
Dennis Franz Schlachta (; born October 28, 1944), known professionally as Dennis Franz, is an American retired actor best known for his role as NYPD Detective Andy Sipowicz in the American Broadcasting Company, ABC television series ''NYPD Blue' ...
) investigates an incident at Vaughan Construction and in another Detective
Diane Russell (
Kim Delaney) aggressively interrogates a suspect regarding the suspicious use of his alias “Pat Vaughan”.
Career
Vaughan earned a PhD in modern European history at
West Virginia University
West Virginia University (WVU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Morgantown, West Virginia, United States. Its other campuses are those of the West Virginia University Ins ...
. At WVU Vaughan wrote a notable seminar paper that was awarded the John L. Snell Memorial Prize from the
Southern Historical Association (awarded annually to the most outstanding original seminar research paper in European history). The paper examined the complex social-political aspects that led to the rise of Polish Solidarity in the late 1970s-and the specific role of national security adviser
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński (, ; March 28, 1928 – May 26, 2017), known as Zbig, was a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist. He served as a counselor to Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was Jimmy Carter's National Securi ...
assisting underground movements behind the
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the political and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were countries connected to the So ...
and helping to deter a potential
Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
military invasion of
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...
in the autumn of 1980.
The paper was published in ''
The Polish Review
''The Polish Review'' is an English-language academic journal published quarterly in New York City by the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America. ''The Polish Review'' was established in 1956, as a successor of the ''PAU Bulletin''. It ...
'' and received attention beyond the academic world.
Jan Nowak-Jeziorański, the former director of
Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is a media organization broadcasting news and analyses in 27 languages to 23 countries across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. Headquartered in Prague since 1995, RFE/RL ...
, praised the article in a speech in New York City before former
U.S. ambassadors to Poland marking the ten year anniversary of the
fall of the Berlin Wall
The fall of the Berlin Wall (, ) on 9 November in German history, 9 November 1989, during the Peaceful Revolution, marked the beginning of the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the figurative Iron Curtain, as East Berlin transit restrictions we ...
. Nowak-Jeziorański argued Vaughan's article moved beyond the popular media narratives and effectively described the more nuanced elements in
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountain ...
that served to undermine the Soviet empire and help bring a peaceful end 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 1989.
Brzezinski wrote Vaughan a letter offering him access to his personal archives in Washington DC. “Over the weekend I had the opportunity to read the article in “The Polish Review” concerning my involvement in U.S. policy toward Eastern Europe” Brzezinski wrote. “I must most heartily congratulate you on it. You have done a truly remarkable job in ‘decoding’ my strategic intent and in analyzing the tactics that I pursued in order to attain my fundamental objectives.” He continued “I do not know the full scope of your ongoing research and your current PhD dissertation. To the extent that it focuses on my public activities, let me offer to you special access to my personal archives. I was so favorably impressed by the thoroughness of your scholarship and by your judicious analysis, that I would be happy also to give you personal access to pertinent sections of my personal diary
hich heretofore has not been made available except as used selectively in my own memoirs”

That PhD dissertation was honored in a ceremony at
Boston University
Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodism, Methodists with its original campus in Newbury (town), Vermont, Newbur ...
as the Polish Ambassador presented Vaughan with the Kazimierz Dzeiwanowski Award. Professor Thomas Gromada, director of the
Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, stated in a press release “Vaughan’s work will make a major contribution to the historiography of the Cold War by redefining Brzezinski’s place in it and in the public and controversial debates over the direction of U.S. foreign policy from the 1950s to the present.”
In 2010 Vaughan authored a strategic biography on
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński (, ; March 28, 1928 – May 26, 2017), known as Zbig, was a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist. He served as a counselor to Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was Jimmy Carter's National Securi ...
that was nominated for the Kazimierz Moczarski Award as the outstanding work in Polish history. He discussed the book in interviews with Polish film critic Michal Oleszczyk in ''
Tygodnik Powszechny
''Tygodnik Powszechny'' (, ''The Common Weekly'') is a Polish Roman Catholic weekly magazine, published in Kraków, which focuses on social, cultural and political issues. It was established in 1945 under the auspices of Cardinal Adam Stefan Sap ...
'' and Magdalena Zakowska in ''
Gazeta Wyborcza
(; ''The Electoral Gazette'' in English) is a Polish nationwide daily newspaper based in Warsaw, Poland. It was launched on 8 May 1989 on the basis of the Polish Round Table Agreement and as a press organ of the Solidarity (Polish trade union), t ...
''.
In 2013 Vaughan wrote a noteworthy chapter to Charles Gati's anthology ''Zbig: The Strategy of Statecraft of Zbigniew Brzezinski''. The introduction was by
Jimmy Carter
James Earl Carter Jr. (October 1, 1924December 29, 2024) was an American politician and humanitarian who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party ...
and contributors included ''
Washington Post
''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'' columnist
David Ignatius
David Reynolds Ignatius (born May 26, 1950) is an American journalist and novelist. He is an associate editor and columnist for ''The Washington Post''. He has written eleven novels, including ''Body of Lies (novel), Body of Lies'', which direct ...
and historian
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Yoshihiro Fukuyama (; born October 27, 1952) is an American political scientist, political economist, and international relations scholar, best known for his book '' The End of History and the Last Man'' (1992). In this work he argues th ...
. “One of the most illuminating chapters written by Patrick Vaughan deals with the relationship between Brzezinski and
Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 16 October 1978 until Death and funeral of Pope John Paul II, his death in 2005.
In his you ...
,” wrote
Vladimir Tismaneanu in a review of the book in London's ''
International Affairs'', “The two men shared a deep love for Polish history, consistent distrust of communist double-talk, and a vibrant sense of moral duty in favour of oppressed individuals.”
Vaughan received a
Fulbright
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people ...
academic grant to Poland and later accepted a professorship at Jagiellonian University in Krakow. In 2007 Vaughan helped found the Trans-Atlantic Studies program at Jagiellonian University-his classes include the History of the Cold War, History of International Relations,
Polish and
Russian Literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia, its Russian diaspora, émigrés, and to Russian language, Russian-language literature. Major contributors to Russian literature, as well as English for instance, are authors of different e ...
, and Science Fiction and Social and Political Metaphor.
Notes
Vaughan's grandmother was the first woman to ride in the
Calgary Stampede
The Calgary Stampede is an annual rodeo, fair, exhibition, and festival held every July in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The ten-day event, which bills itself as "The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth", attracts over one million visitors per year a ...
.
[Portland Oregonian, September 18, 1982.] The Dutch-Polish
stoner surfer band Los Santos Duderinos sampled Vaughan's voice from his “H Frame”
YouTube
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
channel for their soon-to-be released song "Pulse".
References
External links
Patrick Vaughan's profile with a photoPatrick Vaughan's H-Frame YouTube Channel
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vaughan, Patrick
21st-century American historians
21st-century American male writers
Cold War historians
California State University, Chico alumni
West Virginia University alumni
Academic staff of Jagiellonian University
Living people
1965 births
American male non-fiction writers
American humorous columnists