Academic career
After postgraduate work at Indiana University in the late 1960s,Pickett was a professor of history at Rose-Hulman for 35 years. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Nanzan University in Nagoya,Japan in 1989–90,lecturing on American history, [8] and taught American history on U.S. military bases in Korea as a visiting professor for the University of Maryland. [9] He was an educational consultant to the American University of Kyrgyzstan (now called American University of Central Asia) in 2002. [10] In 1992–93,he served as president of the Indiana Association of Historians. [11] In 2006,he co-founded the Web History Center,a hub for archiving and preserving early Internet history,with branches in Indiana at Rose-Hulman and at California's Computer History Museum. [12] [13] Two of his lectures about Eisenhower were featured on C-SPAN's Book TV series in 2000 [14] and 2002. [15] Since 2016,he has been a member of the historical advisory panel for the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington,D.C. [16] Pickett retired from teaching in 2007 but continues to write.
Published works
Over the course of his career,Pickett produced a number of books,journal articles,reviews,and oral histories. Pickett wrote his doctoral thesis on Indiana Sen. Homer Capehart,and his 1990 book Homer E. Capehart:A Senator's Life was the first scholarly biography of the politician. [17] Homer E. Capehart won an Award of Merit from the Ohio Museums Association in 1990. [18] Pickett's work on Eisenhower included two full-length books. Reviewer Lawrence S. Conner called 1995's Dwight David Eisenhower and American Power a "concise and readable" work that helped to revise previous historians' "harsh assessments of Eisenhower." [19] Writing in Presidential Studies Quarterly,Herbert Parmet called the book a "gracefully written," more contemporary view of Eisenhower as a politician who "understood and moved with the rhythms of history." [20] Pickett's 2000 book Eisenhower Decides to Run was one of the first scholarly looks at the 1952 presidential campaign, [21] and focused particularly on Eisenhower's political reputation. [22] Writing for Michigan State University's H-Net forum,Steven Wagner called the book "required reading for Eisenhower specialists" that helped to overturn the older consensus that Eisenhower was only a passive player in his own political career,and made the case that long-simmering political ambitions led to his consciously seeking the presidency in order to block the ambitions of Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft. [23] Reviewer Thomas R. Maddux wrote that Pickett's book challenged the "standard view advanced by Stephen Ambrose and others" that Eisenhower was a reluctant candidate,positing instead that Eisenhower was cautious after witnessing the controversial political rise of his military rival Douglas MacArthur,and was a more skilled behind-the-scenes leader than generally acknowledged. [24]
Pickett also conducted several collections of oral interviews on Capehart [25] and the histories of Terre Haute and surrounding Vigo County [26] and Rose-Hulman. [27]
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