Thomas Balcerski

Thomas Balcerski is the Ray Allen Billington Visiting Professor in U.S. History at Occidental College and a Long-Term Fellow at the Huntington Library for academic year 2022-2023. Thomas Balcerski is an associate professor of American history at Eastern Connecticut State University and the author of Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King (Oxford University Press, 2019). A public-facing historian, he recently appeared on the Discovery+ series "The Book of Queer" (2022) to discuss the sexuality of Abraham Lincoln. Since 2019, Balcerski has contributed to the national conversation on presidential affairs. He has been in demand for speaking engagements at institutions nationwide, among them the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri, Ashland University, the James A. Garfield National Historic Site, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Southern Methodist University Center for Presidential History, the White House Historical Association, Fraunces Tavern Museum, and the First Ladies Association of Research and Education. His high-octane public presentations in the media and on college and university campuses across the nation are reflected in such media as Smithsonian Magazine and New Jersey Monthly Magazine; The Financial Times of London; Newsweek; BBC World News; CBS News (Canada); C-Span; TRT World (Turkey); Asahi Shimbun (Japan); Time Magazine; NBC; the Advocate; the Greenwich Times; Politico; and dozens of local radio stations, television stations, podcasts, and YouTube channels. He has also penned opinion pieces for the Washington Post, CNN, and other outlets.