Michael A. Barnhart

Michael A. Barnhart is an American historian and educator whose work focuses on United States foreign relations, East Asia–United States relations, and modern Japanese history. He is Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus at Stony Brook University.

Education

Barnhart received a Bachelor of Science degree with highest distinction in Communications Studies from Northwestern University in 1973. He pursued graduate studies in history at Harvard University, earning a Master of Arts in 1974. He earned his Ph.D. IN 1980 from Harvard University, presenting a dissertation titled Autarky and International Law. His doctoral advisor was Ernest R. May.

Academic career

Barnhart began teaching at Stony Brook University in 1980, eventually attaining the rank of Distinguished Teaching Professor in 2000. He retired in 2020. His early research focused on Japan's strategic and economic planning before the Pacific War, culminating in his 1987 monograph Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919–1941, a study of Japan's military-industrial policy and expansionism.

His academic work later broadened to encompass broader themes in American foreign policy, including Cold War diplomacy, global military basing, and domestic political influences on international relations.

In 1982, Barnhart was a guest lecturer for a Vietnam War elective course at Ward Melville High School, where he led a class discussion on the Paris Peace Accords using PBS documentary footage and primary documents to examine U.S. diplomatic decisions, and the session, featured in The New York Times, emphasized independent analysis and historical inquiry.

He served on the SUNY–Stony Brook's W. Averell Harriman College faculty and has held guest teaching positions, including a lectureship at Kyoto University in Japan.

Scholarly work

He is known to have edited the collection Congress and United States Foreign Policy: Controlling the Use of Force in the Nuclear Age. This volume, which accompanied the deposit of Senator Jacob Javits’s papers at Stony Brook University, was published alongside a scholarly conference featuring presentations by historians and commentary from senior U.S. officials, including several sitting Senators.

Barnhart's research spans diplomatic, military, and economic history, mainly focusing on U.S. foreign policy and East Asian international relations in the 20th century. His first significant work, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919–1941 (1987), examines how Japan's strategic planning and resource concerns influenced its path to militarization and conflict in the Asia-Pacific region. In Japan and the World Since 1868 (1995), he broadly surveys Japan's evolving foreign relations from the Meiji period to the modern era, contextualizing its global interactions across decades of transformation.

Barnhart has also published studies on American foreign relations, including an analysis of the 1915 Lusitania incident that contrasted isolationist and interventionist arguments in U.S. political discourse. As the founding editor of The Journal of American–East Asian Relations, Barnhart helped establish an interdisciplinary platform for scholarship on cross-Pacific diplomacy.

In history education, Barnhart has been a proponent of simulation-based teaching methods. His course Great Power Rivalries 1936–1947 involved students role-playing historical figures to explore the dynamics of pre-World War II diplomacy. These teaching practices were later developed into the book Can You Beat Churchill? Teaching History Through Simulations (2021) presents case studies and pedagogical frameworks for integrating historical simulations into classroom settings.

In 2024, he released two microgames EXECUTIVE ORDER 9066 Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor and CHALLENGING THE CAMPS Korematsu v. United States, 1944 available through the Reacting to the Past consortium, based at Barnard College designed to engage students with historical decision‑making on matters of international law and policy.

Personal life

Barnhart resides in New York City with his wife, Janet, a former market research analyst and institutional development manager. Their family includes a son and daughter‑in‑law who live in Rockville, Maryland, along their two children.

Selected publications

Books

• Barnhart, Michael A. (2022-05-23), Wray, H.; Conroy, H. (eds.), "Japan's Drive to Autarky", Japan Examined, University of Hawaii Press, pp. 293–300, doi:10.1515/9780824844363-047, ISBN 978-0-8248-4436-3, retrieved 2025-07-22
• Barnhart, Michael A. (2021-06-15), "Can You Beat Churchill?", Cornell University Press, pp. 136–166, doi:10.7591/cornell/9781501755644.003.0010, ISBN 978-1-5017-5564-4, retrieved 2025-07-21 {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
• Barnhart, Michael (2021-05-25), "7. Hornbeck Was Right: The Realist Approach to American Policy toward Japan", Pearl Harbor Reexamined, University of Hawaii Press, pp. 65–72, doi:10.1515/9780824841898-010, ISBN 978-0-8248-4189-8, retrieved 2025-07-22
• Barnhart, Michael A. (2021-06-15), "7. Under the Hood", Can You Beat Churchill?, Cornell University Press, pp. 105–117, doi:10.1515/9781501755668-009, ISBN 978-1-5017-5566-8, retrieved 2025-07-22
• Barnhart, Michael A. (2013-03-22), "2. International Law and Stove-Pipe Hats", Japan Prepares for Total War, Cornell University Press, pp. 50–63, doi:10.7591/9780801468469-005, ISBN 978-0-8014-6846-9, retrieved 2025-07-22
• Barnhart, Michael (2010-09-09), "Domestic politics, interservice impasse, and Japan's decisions for war", History and Neorealism, Cambridge University Press, pp. 185–200, doi:10.1017/cbo9780511778551.009, ISBN 978-0-521-76134-5, retrieved 2025-07-21
• Barnhart, Michael A. (2009). Japan prepares for total war: the search for economic security, 1919 - 1941. Cornell studies in security affairs (Cornell paperbacks, 7. printing ed.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-9529-8.
• Barnhart, Michael A. (January 1, 2006). "History as Victim: The Sorry State of the Study of US–Japanese Relations, 1900–1945". In Schulzinger, R. D. (ed.). A Companion to American Foreign Relations (2nd ed.). Blackwell Publishing. pp. 121–133. doi:10.1002/9780470999042.ch8. ISBN 9780631223153.
• Barnhart, Michael A. (2001). "From Hershey bars to motor cars: America's economic policy toward Japan, 1945–1976". In Iriye, Akira; Wampler, Robert A. (eds.). Partnership: The United States and Japan, 1951-2001. Kodansha International. pp. 201–222. ISBN 9784770027290.
• Barnhart, Michael A. (1998). "Big questions and many tongues: The World War and American isolation". In Iriye, Akira (ed.). Rethinking International Relations: Ernest R. May and the Study of World Affairs (Imprint Studies in International Relations). Imprint Publications (published November 1, 1998). pp. 259–263. ISBN 978-1879176324.
• Barnhart, Michael A. (1995). Japan and the world since 1868. International relations and the great powers. London ; New York: Edward Arnold : Distributed exclusively in the USA by St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-340-52857-0.
• Barnhart, Michael A., ed. (1987). Congress and United States foreign policy: controlling the use of force in the nuclear age. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-88706-465-4.

Journals

• Barnhart, Michael A. (1999). "Review Article: Hirohito and His Army". The International History Review. 21 (3): 696–703. doi:10.1080/07075332.1999.9640874. ISSN 0707-5332.
• BARNHART, MICHAEL A. (1996). "The Origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific: Synthesis Impossible?". Diplomatic History. 20 (2): 241–260. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7709.1996.tb00624.x. ISSN 0145-2096.
• Barnhart, Michael A. (1993). "The Incomplete Alliance: America and Japan after World War II". Diplomatic History. 17 (4): 615–620. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7709.1993.tb00602.x. ISSN 0145-2096.
• Barnhart, Michael A. (1982). "Planning the Pearl Harbor Attack: A Study in Military Politics". Aerospace Historian. 29 (4): 246–252. ISSN 0001-9364. JSTOR 44525470.