Welcome to Prof. Donald L. Hafner’s Home Page

Name: Donald L. Hafner
Electronic Mail: hafner@bc.edu

 

Donald Hafner
Donald Hafner
Professor
(Ph.D., University of Chicago)

Prof. Donald L. Hafner teaches courses in international politics, American foreign policy, and national security and arms control policy in the Political Science Department at Boston College. Prof. Hafner served with the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency during the Carter Administration, where he was an adviser with the U.S. delegations negotiating with the Soviet Union on strategic nuclear weapons and weapons in outer space. After returning to Boston College, he continued to serve as a consultant on arms control issues during President Reagan’s first term. Prof. Hafner’s books and journal articles, published in the United States and abroad, have dealt principally with national security policy.

Prof. Hafner is currently on leave from his teaching responsibilities and serving as Vice Provost for Undergraduate Academic Affairs at Boston College.


New Window Will Open Curriculum Vitae

Office: McGuinn 335
Phone: 617-552-4173
Email: donald.hafner.1@bc.edu

 

I wrote this review of Robert S. McNamara’s New Window Will OpenIn Retrospect back in 1995, in an effort to clarify my own thinking about McNamara’s account of a war I had been studying for many years. Despite the tone of exasperation that infects this review, my frustration with McNamara is tempered by a recognition of the crushing burdens of office and uncertainty that he bore. I would welcome comments from readers, at hafner@bc.edu -- DLH

 

This article ventures well outside of my academic field, but was provoked by curiosity about a brief news item that appeared in a Boston newspaper in 1759, which read as follows:

"We hear from Cambridge, That at the Superiour Court, Court of Assize, &c. held there last Week one Huldah Dudley of Lincoln was convicted of repeatedly committing the detestable Crimes of Adultery and Fornication with her own Mother’s Husband, an old man of 76 years of Age, at the Time their criminal Commerce was carried on. The Sentence pronounced against her by the Court was as follows, viz. That she be set upon the Gallows for the Space of one Hour, with a Rope about her Neck, and the other End cast over the Gallows, and in the way from thence to the Common Goal, that she be severely whipp’d 30 stripes, and that she for ever after wear a Capital I of two Inches long and proportionate Bigness cut out in Cloth of a different Colour to her Cloaths, and sewed upon her upper Garment on the outside of her Arm, or on her Back, in Open View, and that she pay costs, &c. It is to be hoped that knowing the Judgment of the Law against those who commit such Things, others will hear and fear, and not do so wickedly."

As I probed deeper, I found an illuminating tale about crime and punishment in colonial Lincoln, Massachusetts. New Window Will Open"To Be Set Upon the Gallows" pulls together the historical evidence and my interpretation. I would welcome comments from readers, at hafner@bc.edu -- DLH