Paxton, Robert O.

Robert Owen Paxton [B.A. (1954), Washington & Lee University; B.A. (1956) and M.A. (1961), Oxford University; Ph. D. (1963), Harvard University], was born June 15, 1932, in Lexington, Virginia. An esteemed historian and the award-winning author of numerous books including The Anatomy of Fascism (2004), Vichy France and the Jews (1981), and Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-44 (1972), Paxton is professor emeritus at Columbia University, where he taught from 1969 to 1997. He read history at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar from 1954 to 1956. His subsequent awards and honors include fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (1974-75) and the Rockefeller Foundation (1978-79), as well as designations as chevalier by the Ordre National des Arts et des Lettres and officier by the Ordre National du Merite (France).

Widely regarded as the premier scholar on the history of Vichy France, Paxton was the first historian to fully explore the circumstances and extent of France's collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. His work is particularly renowned in France. Elisabeth Bumiller wrote in The New York Times that Paxton is the "intellectual godfather to a new and influential generation of French historians." A frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and numerous other publications, Paxton taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook before he joined the Columbia faculty.

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