Since Decem­ber 16, the Mudd Library’s ele­va­tor has been out-of-service, as the 32-year old sys­tem is under­go­ing an upgrade. Sched­uled to be unavail­able until the end of Jan­u­ary, patrons are advised that box retrieval may take longer than the usual 10 min­utes and that patrons may be asked to limit the num­ber of boxes recalled at any one time, depend­ing on cir­cum­stances. Pic­tured in this blog entry are (from top): the ele­va­tor in its present state as seen from the first floor; the old hydraulic con­troller after it was removed from the ele­va­tor closet; and the cur­rent means of gain­ing access to our stacks.

Accord­ing to their own web­site, The Prox “is a blog about cam­pus life, issues, and events at Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity hosted by The Daily Prince­ton­ian and writ­ten by staff from sev­eral depart­ments, includ­ing Opin­ion and Web.” We like it because it has a recur­ring sec­tion enti­tled “Dig­gin’ in the Mudd” that fea­tures mate­ri­als from our hold­ings. Authored by Martha Vega, she also pho­tographs and then posts items to the site, and, most impor­tant from our point of view, gives us credit! One fun fea­ture of the blog is that cer­tain phrases and sen­tences are writ­ten but struck-out like this, so that you can read the straight news or a more sar­cas­tic inter­pre­ta­tion. I guess this is so Martha doesn’t ruin her chances to work for the Wall Street Jour­nal some day.

The Mudd Man­u­script Library was pleased to learn that its blog was named one of the “100 Blogs That Will Make You Smarter” by Online Universities.com. See for yourself–look under the sec­tion “Higher Edu­ca­tion”.

In honor of the cen­ten­nial of John Fos­ter Dulles’s grad­u­a­tion from Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity, the See­ley G. Mudd Man­u­script Library in con­junc­tion with the Woodrow Wil­son School of Pub­lic and Inter­na­tional Affairs presents Chris Tudda, author of The Truth is Our Weapon: The Rhetor­i­cal Diplo­macy of Dwight D. Eisen­hower and John Fos­ter Dulles. Tudda will speak on Mon­day, Novem­ber 10, 2008, 4:30 p.m., Woodrow Wil­son School, Bowl 10. A recep­tion at Mudd Library fol­lows the talk where the exhi­bi­tion “John Fos­ter Dulles: From Diploma to Diplo­mat” is on view.

Chris Tudda is a His­to­rian in the Declas­si­fi­ca­tion and Pub­lish­ing Divi­sion in the Office of the His­to­rian, Depart­ment of State, where he declas­si­fies man­u­scripts for the For­eign Rela­tions of the United States series and co-produces the Office’s internet-only pub­li­ca­tions. He is also cur­rently com­pil­ing a vol­ume on the Carter Administration’s United Nations and Arms Con­trol poli­cies for FRUS. He earned a B.A. from the Uni­ver­sity of Ver­mont in 1987 and the Ph.D. from Amer­i­can Uni­ver­sity in 2002. He is the author of The Truth is our Weapon: The Rhetor­i­cal Diplo­macy of Dwight D. Eisen­hower and John Fos­ter Dulles pub­lished by Louisiana State Uni­ver­sity in April 2006. He is the author of the forth­com­ing book chap­ter, “The Devil’s Advo­cate: Robert Bowie, West­ern Euro­pean Inte­gra­tion, and the Ger­man Prob­lem, 1953–54,” in Anna K. Nel­son, ed., For­eign Poli­cies and the Men who Made Them (Row­man & Lit­tle­field, fall 2008). His arti­cle “A Mes­siah that will Never Come: British Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Efforts, Amer­i­can Inde­pen­dence, and Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War Diplo­macy,” will be pub­lished in the win­ter issue of Diplo­matic His­tory. He is cur­rently research­ing a reassess­ment of Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War Diplo­macy and writ­ing a his­tory of U.S.-China rela­tions dur­ing the first Nixon administration.

“John Fos­ter Dulles: From Diploma to Diplo­mat,” a new exhi­bi­tion at the See­ley G. Mudd Man­u­script Library, cel­e­brates the cen­ten­nial of John Fos­ter Dulles’ grad­u­a­tion from Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity in 1908 with a chron­i­cle of his diplo­matic career and his influ­ence on U.S. for­eign pol­icy. The exhi­bi­tion opens Mon­day, Aug. 11, and runs through Fri­day, Jan. 30.

Based on the life and work of Dulles (1888–1959), it begins with his work while still a Prince­ton stu­dent as secretary-clerk of the China del­e­ga­tion at the Sec­ond Hague Peace Con­fer­ence in 1907 and cul­mi­nates with his ser­vice as sec­re­tary of state for Pres­i­dent Eisen­hower from 1953 to 1959.

Draw­ing pre­dom­i­nantly from the John Fos­ter Dulles Papers, as well as other related Mudd Library col­lec­tions, the exhi­bi­tion tracks his diplo­matic career that spanned both World Wars and the Cold War. As a young diplo­mat, Dulles par­tic­i­pated in the Treaty of Ver­sailles nego­ti­a­tions after World War I. Fol­low­ing his involve­ment in stud­ies on fos­ter­ing world peace dur­ing the 1940s, he also served as the U.S. rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the United Nations and nego­ti­ated sev­eral treaties for Pres­i­dent Tru­man, includ­ing the Japan­ese Peace Treaty of 1951 which for­mally ended World War II. As Eisenhower’s sec­re­tary of state, Dulles ush­ered in a period of hard-line diplo­macy that shaped both the country’s rela­tion­ship with the Soviet Union and over­all Cold War doctrine.

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