Stanley Hoffmann (27 November 1928 – 13 September 2015) was a French political scientist and the Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Professor at Harvard University, specializing in French politics and society, European politics, U.S. foreign policy, and international relations.

Biography

Hoffmann was born in Vienna in 1928 and moved to France with his family the following year. He was born to a distant American father and an Austrian mother. The Nazis classified Hoffmann and his mother as Jewish, forcing them to flee Paris in 1940. They fled to the village of Lamalou-les-Bains in the south of France, where they spent the war hiding from the Gestapo. A French citizen since 1947, Hoffmann spent his childhood between Paris and Nice before studying at Sciences Po, graduating at the top of his class in 1948. He also obtained a doctorate at the Faculty of Law of Paris in 1953. In 1955, Hoffmann became an instructor in the Department of Government at Harvard. After some years, he received tenure. He was appointed C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1964. He founded Harvard's Center for European Studies in 1969 (later the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies). His main fields of specialization were French politics and society, European politics, U.S. foreign policy, and international relations. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1981. In 1997, Hoffmann was named the Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Professor. In addition to his teaching and prolific writing, Hoffmann also participated as an expert in the film The World According to Bush, dealing with the vicissitudes of the Bush administration after the 2000 presidential election. In 1996, Hoffmann received the Balzan Prize for Political Science: Contemporary International Relations from the International Balzan Foundation of Italy and Switzerland. On September 13, 2015, Hoffmann died in Cambridge, Massachusetts at age 86.

Major publications

As sole author

Collaborative work

As sole editor

As co-editor