Peter L. Hahn B.A. summa cum laude, 1982, Ohio Wesleyan University; M.A., 1984, Ph.D., 1987, Vanderbilt University.

An accomplished research scholar, Professor Hahn has published nine books on the history of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East, as well as scores of articles, essays, and reviews.  His most recent books, both published in 2025, are a second edition of his best-selling textbook, Crisis and Crossfire: The United States and the Middle East since 1945 (Potomac Books) and Libya and the West: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press).  Professor Hahn has conducted research in the archives of the United States, Israel, Britain, and France; delivered scholarly papers and invited lectures in eleven countries; consulted with policymakers in the U.S. Departments of State, Defense, and Justice and with senior officers of the Ohio National Guard; and given interviews to the media on six continents. 

Professor Hahn served as dean of Arts and Humanities in 2015-21 and as chair of the History Department in 2006-15.  In 2002-15, he served as executive director of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), a professional society of some 1,400 members residing in 44 countries.  He was elected by the membership to be president of SHAFR in 2018.  In 2010, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland appointed Professor Hahn to a five-year term on the State of Ohio’s War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission.

Professor Hahn has advised or co-advised more than three dozen doctoral dissertations in U.S. foreign relations history. He has taught thousands of undergraduates in courses on the history of U.S. foreign relations and modern U.S. history. He co-launched an undergraduate study abroad program on World War II and its impact on the modern world, and has co-led more than a dozen alumni and student tours of war-related sites in Europe and the Pacific.

Professor Hahn earned his B.A. summa cum laude from Ohio Wesleyan University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University, where he defended his dissertation with distinction.  He held a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship in Jerusalem in 1995, and he won the 1998 Stuart L. Bernath Lecture Prize (for excellence in teaching and scholarship). In 2017, Professor Hahn was awarded SHAFR's first annual prize for distinguished service; that award was subsequently named in his honor as the Peter L. Hahn Distinguished Service Award.  

In 2024, Professor Hahn was named a Distinguished Professor by the College of Arts and Sciences.  In 2025, the Board of Trustees conferred on him the title Distinguished University Professor, the most eminent faculty recognition at Ohio State.