Dear CSD Scholars and Friends:
It is with great sadness that we write to let you know that CSD founder and executive director Dr. Patrick Garrity passed away peacefully on May 10, after a long battle with skin cancer. Right up until the end, he devoted his time and thoughts to his life’s work, attending to his John Quincy Adams essay, the work of future scholars, and outreach for his beloved CSD.
The Classics of Strategy and Diplomacy Project was Patrick’s realization of a lifetime’s worth of study and love for how the big, messy, enduring questions of human life were intertwined with–and illuminated–the fields of diplomacy, strategy, and geopolitics.
Patrick had received his BA from the College of Idaho, and his MA and PhD from the Claremont Graduate School, where his studies with Dr. Harold W. Rood were particularly formative, especially for his later founding of CSD.
After graduating from Claremont, Patrick took the position of technical staff member and guest scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He later taught at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Catholic University, and the Naval Postgraduate School. Most recently, Patrick was a nonresident senior fellow with the Miller Center’s Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia and Senior Fellow of the Matthew J. Ryan Center for the Study of Free Institutions and the Public Good, of Villanova University. Patrick was also a Research Scholar at Hillsdale’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government in Washington, DC.
Patrick is author of In Search of Monsters to Destroy? American Foreign Policy, Revolution, and Regime Change, 1776-1900; and the co-author of A Sacred Union of Citizens: George Washington’s Farewell Address and the American Character; You Run the Show or the Show Runs You: Capturing Harold W. Rood’s Strategic Thought; and the forthcoming United and Independent: John Quincy Adams on American Foreign Policy. He published on American national security policy and history in such journals as Survival, Washington Quarterly, Claremont Review, The National Interest, Parameters, Comparative Strategy, and the Journal of Strategic Studies. A full obituary is attached.
Patrick will be missed by so many, his natural family as well as his Claremont family, with whom he formed a bond of friendship that neither time nor distance could break. We are especially thankful for Patrick’s cousin, Michael Walker (who also studied at Claremont for his MBA). Michael and his wife cared for Patrick at their home in Maine during Patrick’s last years, and were there up to the very end.
Last year, as part of our institutional sponsorship agreement, Patrick and his friend and fellow Roodian (and CSD Advisor) Matthew Spalding made an arrangement whereby, upon Patrick’s passing, Hillsdale College would assume management of The Classics of Strategy and Diplomacy Project under the auspices of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government in Washington, DC. Patrick’s papers, research, and books—along with the intellectual content of CSD—will be preserved by the College as Patrick’s legacy, alongside the archived materials of his beloved teacher, Harold W. Rood.
CSD will continue and, with your continued help, come to thrive. This was Patrick’s dearest wish.
–The CSD Masthead and Advisors