SU's Kotlowski Appointed Fulbright Scholar in Austria

SALISBURY, MD---A Salisbury University history professor has earned a prestigious Fulbright Scholar Award for 2015-16.

Dr. Dean Kotlowski will be the Fulbright-Botstiber Visiting Professor of Austrian-American Studies at the University of Salzburg in Austria next spring. During the appointment, he will research U.S.-Austrian relations and teach a class in the American Studies program.

Kotlowski’s research will focus on how and why countries seek to protect their international security, an issue with contemporary relevance. His transatlantic study innovatively examines how two U.S. politicians ― Franklin D. Roosevelt and Paul V. McNutt ― and the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig conceptualized security.

“The 1930s and 1940s were a time of global insecurity with the Great Depression, the rise of dictatorships, war and genocide,” Kotlowski explained. Roosevelt and McNutt worked for economic and national security for Americans and collective security for nations threatened by Nazism, but security eluded Zweig, an Austrian Jew who was forced to flee his homeland following the rise of Hitler. The University of Salzburg is home to the renowned Stefan Zweig Centre.

“Fulbright scholarships are outstanding opportunities for teacher-scholars to enrich their research and invigorate their teaching through the values of internationalism,” Kotlowski said.

This is Kotlowki’s second Fulbright Scholar award.  In 2008, he was the visiting Fulbright professor at De La Salle University in Manila, Philippines, an experience which he described as “amazing.”

Kotlowski is the author of Paul V. McNutt and the Age of FDR, published by Indiana University Press earlier this year. He is featured in the 2013 documentary Rescue in the Philippines: Refuge from the Holocaust, which tells how McNutt and others helped 1,300 Jews escape persecution in Germany and immigrate to Manila in the 1930s.

Kotlowski is also the author of the critically acclaimed Nixon’s Civil Rights: Politics, Principle and Policy (Harvard University Press, 2001). He has published over 30 articles and chapters in journals and books in the U.S., U.K., Austria, Germany, Denmark, Finland and Russia, and he has lectured in 18 countries.

Kotlowski arrived at SU in 2000. In 2002, he received the Student Government Association’s Faculty Member of the Year Award, followed by the Excellence in Scholarship Award from the Charles R. and Martha N. Fulton School of Liberal Arts in 2009 and SU’s Distinguished Faculty Award in 2010. During 2005-06, he was the Paul V. McNutt Visiting Professor of History at Indiana University, Bloomington.

“SU students benefit from the teaching and mentoring of Dr. Kotlowski, whose expertise has been featured on outlets from C-SPAN to National Public Radio,” said Dr. Maarten Pereboom, Fulton School dean. “His Fulbright to Austria fosters cross-cultural education, as his expanded understanding of the world in the 1930s will further enhance his history courses at SU.”

Some 20 faculty, students and graduates from SU have earned Fulbright fellowships, grants, scholarships and alumni ambassador appointments. Kotlowski will be one of approximately 800 scholars going overseas on Fulbright awards next year. 

For more information, call 410-543-6030 or visit the SU website at www.salisbury.edu.