Jeffrey Hart

Jeffrey Peter Hart (February 23, 1930 – February 16, 2019) was an American cultural critic, essayist, columnist, and Professor Emeritus of English at Dartmouth College.

Early life and education Hart was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. After two years as an undergraduate at Dartmouth, he transferred to Columbia University, where he joined the Philolexian Society and obtained his B.A. (1952) and Ph.D., both in English literature.

During the Korean War he served in U.S. Naval Intelligence in Boston.

In 1962 he joined William F. Buckley's conservative journal National Review as a book reviewer, requiring a trip from Hanover, New Hampshire to New York City every other week.

Hart took a leave of absence from Dartmouth in 1968 to work for the abortive presidential campaign of Governor of California Ronald Reagan. This role led him to briefly serve as a White House speechwriter for Richard Nixon.

Death He died on February 16, 2019, at age 88.

Publications

"Raspail's Superb Scandal". Review of The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail. National Review, Vol. 27, September 26, 1975, pp. 1062–1063. When the Going was Good: Life in the Fifties (1982) From This Moment On: America in 1940 (1987)

Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education (2001) The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times (2006)