Henry Franklin Graff – an American historian who served on the faculty of Columbia University from 1946 to 1991, including a period as Chairman of the History Department – died on 7 April,2020 due to COVID-19.
Graff specialized in the history of the Presidency of the United States and of American foreign relations. His pioneering “Seminar on the Presidency,” one of Columbia’s most popular courses, was attended by President Harry Truman in 1959 and President Gerald Ford in 1989. Graff has twice served as Chairman of the Pulitzer Prize jury in American history.
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Graff to the National Historical Publications Commission, and in 1993 President Bill Clinton appointed Graff to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. In 2005, Graff received an honorary doctor of letters degree from Columbia in recognition of his contributions to the field of American history, service to Presidents and to the University.
He died due to complications brought on by COVID-19.
Henry Franklin Graff was born on August 11, 1921 in New York City, the son of Florence B. Morris and Samuel F. Graff, a salesman in the garment district in New York City. His parents were natives of New York, and of German Jewish extraction. He had a twin sister, Myra Balber.
Graff attended George Washington High Schoo and graduated from City College of New York, where he received a B.S.S. degree, magna cum laude, in 1941. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He was studying for his master's at Columbia, as the first Jewish student in the History Department of the University, in 1942 when he enlisted in the army. He earned the degree later, and returned to teach at Columbia in 1946 and earn his Ph.D. in 1949.
Graff enlisted in the Army shortly after Pearl Harbor, and rose from private to first lieutenant in the Signal Corps prior to his discharge in 1946. As a result of studying Japanese at Columbia, he served as a Japanese language officer and cryptanalyst in the Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) (predecessor of the National Security Agency). In this role, he read foreign codes and ciphers, particularly the now famous Purple code.
Upon returning to civilian life, Graff taught for a semester in the History Department of City College before joining the faculty of Columbia University in 1946. He remained on the faculty of Columbia until he retired in 1991, serving for a period as Chairman of the Department of History.
He has been the distinguished speaker at the United States Air Force Academy, and the Sol Feinstone Memorial Lecturer at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Graff twice served as chairman of the Pulitzer Prize jury for American history and also served as chairman of the jury for the Bancroft Prize.
Graff served for years as a member of the Board of Directors of the Rand McNally Company. He also served on the Board of Trustees of the Columbia University Press.
Graff served for six years on the National Historical Publications Commission (1965–71), to which he had been appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Beginning in 1971 he served for a number of years on the Historical Advisory Committee of the United States Air Force, by appointment of the Secretary of the Air Force.
Graff is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, primarily on topics in American history, including several widely used text books.
His first book was Bluejackets with Perry in Japan, published by the New York Public Library in 1952.
Graff was chairman of the editorial board of Constitution magazine and was a member of the editorial advisory board of the four-volume Encyclopedia of the American Presidency published by Simon & Schuster in 1994. He was on the editorial board of the Presidential Studies Quarterly.
Graff was awarded many awards in his lifetime for all his great works.
In 2000 the Westchester Community College Foundation honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award for his scholarship in American history and the American Presidency.
He died in a hospital in Greenwich, Connecticut, on April 7, 2020 at the age of 98 from complications of COVID-19.