Office: 405 Humanities

Ph.D., Rutgers University

Justin Hart began teaching at Texas Tech during the fall of 2005, after receiving a Ph.D. in History from Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, NJ, with specializations in U. S. History, U. S. Foreign Relations, and African-American History. His dissertation was directed by Lloyd C. Gardner. Dr. Hart received his B.A. in History (Magna Cum Laude, with Honors in the Liberal Arts and Departmental Distinction in History) in 1996 from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. At SMU, he was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He grew up in Emporia, Kansas, the home of the great Progressive Era journalist, William Allen White.

Dr. Hart teaches the U. S. History survey, as well graduate and undergraduate courses in the history of U. S. foreign relations from the colonial period to the present. He also teaches undergraduate courses in the history of the Cold War and the history of U. S. foreign relations through film, as well as graduate courses in general U.S. history. He has been nominated by the History Department for several university-wide teaching awards; in 2010, he received the President's Excellence in Teaching Award and in 2016 he was named “Outstanding Teacher” by the History Graduate Student Organization.

Dr. Hart's research focuses on the intersection of domestic affairs and U.S. foreign relations. His first book, Empire of Ideas: The Origins of Public Diplomacy and the Transformation of U. S. Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 2013), explored how and why the U.S. government adopted the methods of what we now describe as public diplomacy beginning in the 1930s. Dr. Hart is also the author of several articles and book chapters on public diplomacy and various other topics related to the cultural dimension of U.S. foreign relations, including “Making Democracy Safe for the World: Race, Propaganda, and the Transformation of U. S. Foreign Policy during World War II” (Pacific Historical Review, February 2004), which received the James Madison Prize of the Society for the History of the Federal Government and the W. Turrentine Jackson Prize of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association. He regularly presents at conferences throughout the United States and around the world, most often at the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Currently, he is writing a book on President's Truman's failed campaign for Universal Military Training in the United States.