Professor Emeritus

CB# 3195
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599
rhkohn@unc.edu

M.S. University of Wisconsin, 1964
Ph.D. University of Wisconsin, 1968

Research Interests

Professor Kohn’s focus has been American military history generally, emphasizing national security and military policy, strategy, the American experience with war-making, and the connections between war, the military, and American society. In recent years his concentration has been on current civil-military relations, particularly civilian control of the military. His long term project is a study of presidential war leadership in American history from the 1790s to today, but he continues to research, lecture on, and publish in the area of contemporary civil-military relations.

Some Notable Publications

• “Building Trust: Civil-Military Behaviors for Effective National Security,” chapter 13 in Suzanne Nielsen and Don Snider, eds., American Civil-Military Relations: Realities and Challenges in the New Era (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 264–289
• “Tarnished Brass: Is the U.S. Military Profession in Decline?” World Affairs, 171 (Spring 2009):73–83
• “The Erosion of Civilian Control of the Military in the United States Today,” Naval War College Review, 55 (2002):8–59
• Co-editor, Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security (MIT Press, 2001)
• Co-author, The Exclusion of Black Soldiers from the Medal of Honor in World War II: The Study Commissioned by the United States Army to Investigate Racial Bias in the Awarding of the Nation’s Highest Military Decoration (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1997)
• Editor, The United States Military under the Constitution of the United States, 1789–1989, (New York: New York University Press, 1991). Paperback edition 1992. Also published as No. 69 of the Revue Internationale d’Histoire Militaire, 1990
• Eagle and the Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783–1802 (New York: The Free Press, 1975). Paperback edition 1985

Graduate Students Advised by Richard H. Kohn

• Sarah Barksdale
• Jonathan Due
• Josiah Grover