Ivo John Lederer

Ivo John Lederer (December 11, 1929 – June 18, 1998) was a diplomatic historian who taught at Princeton (1955–57), Yale (1957–65) and Stanford (1965–77) universities. He also served at the Ford Foundation in New York City as Program Officer in charge of East European affairs. In 1977, he left academics to begin a second career in business.

Ivo John Lederer was born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia into a Jewish family. In 1941 Lederer's family fled from the Nazis to Italy. After three years in hiding there, the family gained passage to the United States aboard the Liberty Ship U.S.S. Henry Gibbons. Soon after their arrival, the group was transported to a refugee center in Oswego, New York. They expected to be sent back to Europe at the end of the war, however in 1945 President Harry Truman signed special legislation allowing the refugees to remain in the United States, becoming citizens.

The story of these refugees is told in the book Haven, The Unknown Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees by Ruth Gruber (New York: Putnam, 1983). In 2001, the book was also made into a film starring Natasha Richardson, Hal Holbrook and Anne Bancroft which aired on CBS in 2001. Today, the voyage and experiences of that band of refugees is chronicled by the Safe Haven Museum in Oswego, New York. A filmed interview with Dr. Lederer is included on the museum's website.

International Who's Who notes that after studying 1947-48 at City College of New York, Lederer earned his B.A. in History at the University of Colorado, Boulder, 1951. He then studied 1951-52 at the University of Virginia before earning his Masters, 1954, and Ph.D., 1957, in Contemporary Diplomatic History at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton.

Dr. Lederer wrote or edited a variety of books and articles, including Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1963) which won the George Louis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association. On December 17, 1995, following conclusion of the Dayton Accords on former Yugoslavia, he wrote an article for The Washington Post entitled Bosnia: Precedents of Peace in which he stressed his view that stability in southeastern Europe was very much "in the American national interest."

...
Wikipedia