Bundy, Mcgeorge (1919–1996)

Special assistant for national security affairs from 1961 to 1966 who, following his career in government, served as president of the Ford Foundation from 1966 to 1979. An Army intelligence officer during World War II, Bundy was on the Harvard faculty from 1949 to 1961. In 1953, at age 34, he became the youngest dean of the university's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

McGeorge Bundy graduated from Yale University in 1940 and became a junior fellow at Harvard University the following year. After naval service in World War II, he went to work for Secretary of War Henry Stimson. In 1949, he joined the faculty of Harvard as a lecturer in the Department of Government. Two years later, he accepted an offer to become Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. In that position, he played a key role in the founding of Harvard's Center for International Affairs and its Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

At this time, Bundy had a casual friendship with Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy. When Kennedy was elected president in 1960, he asked Bundy to serve as his national security advisor. Bundy was one of a number of Kennedy appointees with distinguished academic backgrounds. The group was affectionately known as the “eggheads” for their intelligence and scholarly pedigrees.

Bundy is best known for his influence in foreign policy during the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Bundy supervised the staff of the National Security Council under both Kennedy and Johnson and, from that position, played a major role in forming U.S. foreign policy during the 1960s. He served as an adviser to President Kennedy during the Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961) and the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962). As national security advisor to President Johnson, Bundy was an early advocate of increased American involvement in Vietnam.

Despite his early support for escalating the war in Vietnam and bombing North Vietnam, he came to regret those decisions. By 1968, Bundy had changed his attitude and become an advocate of limiting American involvement in Vietnam. As one of the earliest members of the Johnson administration to renounce its Vietnam policies, he spent much of his later career trying to understand and explain how he and others had erred so grievously. Because of his central role in planning the war in Vietnam, Bundy has been accused of being a war criminal by antiwar activists who hold him responsible for the deaths of Americans and Vietnamese during the war.