David Wingeate Pike 

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Contemporary History and Politics 

David Wingeate Pike was a Distinguished Professor in the Department of History and Politics, who gave over 30 years of service as a member of AUP’s faculty and a further 20 as faculty emeritus following his retirement. He died on June 20, 2020, at the age of 90. 

The author of over 30 volumes relating to the Second World War and other topics, Pike was a respected historian and valued resource for both students and fellow faculty members. He held a bachelor’s in comparative literature from McGill University, a master’s from the Universidad Interamericana in Mexico, and two doctoral degrees, the first in the political culture of Latin America from Stanford, where he also taught at the Institute of Hispanic-American and Lusa-Brazilian Studies, and the second in contemporary history from the University of Toulouse.  

Pike joined AUP in 1968, after a meeting with AUP’s founder and first President, Dr. Lloyd A. Delamater. Then Dean Carol Maddison charged him with building the history program and the Division of Social Sciences. His classes on Western civilization were a popular choice among students for many years. In the 1980s, Pike also stepped forward to teach a course on medieval history in the Department of European Cultural Studies. 

He was an avid promoter of faculty and student scholarship. In 1973, he launched American College in Paris Publications, the college’s first press, and regularly collaborated with community members in his own work. While he retired from AUP in 2001, he continued publishing for the rest of his life. As recently as 2017, he contributed an 80-page article to a jubilee volume honoring a fellow Second World War historian. He also made significant contributions to AUP’s own archives, detailing the University’s history.