Academic and Political Career
Ledeen holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he specialized in Modern Europe. At Washington University in St. Louis, Ledeen was denied tenure, according to history department faculty interviewed by the Washington Post, because of questions regarding the "quality of his scholarship" and about whether Ledeen had "used the work of somebody else without proper credit". One faculty member said "the 'quasi-irregularity' at issue didn't warrant the negative vote on tenure for Ledeen".
Ledeen was subsequently named Visiting Professor at the University of Rome. One of Ledeen's principal mentors was the Jewish German-born historian George Mosse, for whom he was research assistant at the time. Mosse wrote two famous books on National Socialism. Another major influence on Ledeen was the Italian historian Renzo De Felice. Ledeen held political views which stress "the urgency of combating centralized state power and the centrality of human freedom" that are said to have influenced or inspired the Bush administration.
Earlier in his career, Ledeen authored Universal Fascism: The Theory and Practice of the Fascist International, 1928–1936, published in 1972 and now out of print. The book, which was his doctoral dissertation, was the first work to explore Italian leader Benito Mussolini's efforts to create a Fascist international in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Ledeen follows Italian historian Renzo de Felice in drawing a distinction between "fascism-regime" and "fascism-movement", and seems to approve of at least one aspect of the latter, saying "fascism nevertheless constituted a political revolution in Italy. For the first time, there was an attempt to mobilize the masses and to involve them in the political life of the country", and describing the fascist state as "a generator of energy and creativity". Ledeen continued his studies in Italian Fascism with a study of the takeover of Fiume by Italian irredentist forces under Gabriele d'Annunzio, who Ledeen argued was the proto-type for Mussolini.
Ledeen is a strong admirer of Niccolò Machiavelli, whom he regards as one of the greatest political thinkers. In Ledeen's view, Machiavelli combined democratic idealism and the necessary political realism to secure and defend idealism in perfect measure.
In 1980, in the period leading up to the U.S. presidential elections, Ledeen, along with Arnaud de Borchgrave, wrote a series of articles published in The New Republic and elsewhere about Billy Carter's contacts with the Muammar al-Gaddafi regime in Libya.
Ledeen has been a long time and active supporter of political dissidents, particularly those of Iranian nationality. In June 2008, he personally purchased the plane ticket to transfer Iranian student activist, Ahmad Batebi, from Erbil, Iraq, to Washington DC, where Batebi was escorted by NSC officials from his plane in Dulles International Airport to the custody of his lawyer, Lily Mazahery.
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