Title: Academic Administrator, Retired
Location: Ticonderoga, New York, United States
Christopher N. Breiseth, Retired Academic Administrator, has been recognized by Marquis Who’s Who Top Educators for dedication, achievements, and leadership in higher education.
Dr. Breiseth is a retired professor, academic administrator, and community advocate celebrating almost five decades of professional excellence. He credits his mother, a member of the St. Paul, Minnesota Urban League, with encouraging him from a young age to think about diversity, equity and inclusion of all citizens, shaping the direction of his career. In 1958, Dr. Breiseth completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in history at the University of California, Los Angeles, before attending Cornell University for graduate work. He interrupted his doctoral studies to attend Oxford University where he was awarded a Bachelor of Letters in Modern British History in 1962, before returning to Cornell, earning a Doctor of Philosophy in European Intellectual History in 1964. Dr. Breiseth accepted a teaching position at Williams College in 1963, becoming an assistant professor of history in 1964. Between 1967 and 1969, Dr. Breiseth served as the Chief of Community Action Policy Guidance for the Office of Economic Opportunity. In 1970, he was awarded a Danforth Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Black Studies at the University of Chicago.
He left Williams College in 1971 to become an associate professor at Sangamon State University and served on the board of the Springfield Urban League, contributing to a successful federal lawsuit to desegregate the Springfield, Illinois public schools. Dr. Breiseth moved into academic administration in 1980, spending three years as President of Deep Springs College in California before returning for a final year of teaching at Sangamon State (now the University of Illinois, Springfield). He served as President of Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania from 1984 to 2001. From 2001 to 2009, he was President and CEO of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, New York. Dr. Breiseth is a noted expert on Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. A 1958 Woodrow Wilson Fellow and recipient of four honorary doctorates and a 1992 Distinguished Citizen Award from the Boy Scouts of America, Dr. Breiseth has also previously been honored with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. In retirement, he has played leadership roles on the boards of the Frances Perkins Center and the National New Deal Preservation Association. He has contributed recently to two books, “A Promise to all Generations: Stories and Essays about Social Security and Frances Perkins,” and “Women and the Spirit of the New Deal.” He is working on a personal memoir.
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