The economist Walt Whitman Rostow was born in New York City on the 7th October 1916. Rostow became a graduate of Yale University at the age of 19, after first enrolling there when he was fifteen years old (Keene Ann T, American National Biography Online, 2008). He subsequently spent two more years studying at Oxford University after being named a Rhodes Scholar, and then continued with graduate study in economics back at Yale University in 1938 for a further two years where he received a PhD (Keene Ann T, American National Biography Online, 2008). Rostow then joined Columbia University where he taught economics for only one year (Encyclopaedia.com, 2004).
During World War 2, Rostow was sent to London where he worked for the Office of Strategic…show more content… Kennedy, Rostow maintained the role of chairman of the Policy Planning Council at the State Department, with the thinking that spreading economic “uplift” among lesser nations would stop them from becoming Communist and would secure America’s position as world leader (Solivetti, Luigi M, 2005). Rostow maintained this role even after Kennedy’s assassination and later on became a key foreign policy advisor under President Johnson’s reign. As a result, Rostow played an important role in the decision making process for the Vietnam War and encouraged it as he wanted to keep “Communist regimes from gaining ascendency” (Keene Ann T, American National Biography Online, 2008). Rostow left government service in 1969, when Nixon became president, and when the Vietnam War was finally over Rostow became a target for the anti-war movement due to his support of the Vietnam war (Keene Ann T, American National Biography Online, 2008), resulting in a loss of academic credibility. The University of Texas at Austin, however, did offer him the position of Rex G. Baker Professor of Political Economy and professor of History in 1969, and Rostow remained at the University until his death in 2003 (Douglas C. Dacy, James K. Galbraith, and Bobby R. Inman, The University of Texas at Austin,
