A historian of American foreign relations, Robert Beisner taught at American University from 1965 until his retirement in 1998. He attended Hastings College for two years, before transferring to the University of Chicago, where he earned both his master’s degree (1960) and his doctorate (1965) in history. His dissertation won the Allan Nevins Prize for the best dissertation in American history in 1966, and he served as editor in chief of the two-volume bibliographic Guide to the Foreign Relations of the United States.