Patrick Iber is an Associate Professor in the Department of History. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago and is an historian of 20th century Latin America and U.S. foreign relations. His first book, Neither Peace nor Freedom: The Cultural Cold War in Latin America, examines how artists, writers and intellectuals participated in and generated Cold War conflict.
Patrick is also on the editorial board at Dissent and frequently contributes there and has written for The New Republic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Awl, Jacobin, Slate, The Baffler, The Nation, Letras Libres, Nexos and Horizontal.
His interests include the politics of culture and intellectuals, socialism and democracy, poverty and inequality, cultural diplomacy and imperialism, and the added value of transnational approaches to history. He is currently developing a new book project on how social scientists understood and responded to poverty and inequality in 20th century Latin America.
A word from Leonora Neville, Chair of the History Department:
Patrick Iber is reinvigorating our programs in Latin American History and United States Foreign Policy since his arrival in 2017. His first book, Neither Peace nor Freedom: The Cultural Cold War in Latin America (Harvard 2015) examines the Cold War in Latin America as it played out through cultural competition both between rival intellectual camps in Latin America and between the Soviet and US superpowers. The research for this project took Iber to 23 different archives in a half dozen different countries. The Latin American Studies Association gave Neither Peace nor Freedom the Luciano Tomassini Latin American International Relations Book Award in 2017. Iber’s service beyond the walls of our university is exceptional. He has written over 34 book reviews in academic journals, and regularly injects historical expertise into conversations on current events in major news and analysis outlets. He has been published by the New York Times, the New Republic, the Chronicle of Higher Education and has been interviewed by or quoted in the Dallas Morning News, Forbes, Business Insider, Washington Post, Confabulario de El Universal, Radio Francia Internacional, Al-Jazeera America, TeleSur, Prensa Latina, Xinhua, and Radio Habana. Iber is becoming the person to go to for insightful historical commentary on issues relating to Latin American and its relations with the United States. It is a true delight to have Professor Iber as part of our community of historians.