Contact: John Gaddis at 614/593-4356

ATHENS, Ohio -- Ohio University Distinguished Professor of History John Lewis Gaddis has been appointed by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars as one of 31 Fellows for the 1995-96 academic year.

Gaddis, a diplomatic historian, was chosen as a Wilson Fellow from a field of 813 applicants from 86 countries and represent a broad mix of disciplines, professions, topics, nationalities and viewpoints.

Created by Congress in 1968 as the nation's official memorial to its 28th president, the Washington, D.C.-based center seeks to commemorate both the scholarly depth and the public concerns of Woodrow Wilson through the generation of scholarship at the most advanced level.

Gaddis' fellowship project will be a biography of George F. Kennan, the principal architect of U.S. containment policy during the Cold War.

Gaddis is author of the landmark The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (1987). Other major publications include: The United States and the Origin of the Cold War (1972); Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (1982); and The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations (1992). He also is author of the text, Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States: An Interpretive History (1978 and 1990).

A native of Texas, Gaddis received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1968 and has taught at Ohio University since 1969. He also has been Visiting Professor of American Studies at the University of Helsinki (1980-81), Visiting Professor of Politics at Princeton University (1987) Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University (1992-93) and the Council on Foreign Relation's 1994 Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow.