Dr. Ernest Hargreaves Latham, Jr., Awarded Prestigious Book Prize and Honored

In December 2017, Dr. Ernest Hargreaves Latham, Jr., the American historian and diplomat and an Adjunct Professor at the Saint Photios Orthodox Theological Seminary, was awarded the George Ionescu-Gion Prize for Modern History for one of his latest books, What Strange Fate: J. Breckinridge Bayne, an American on the Romanian Front (1916–1919), which was published by Editura Vremea, the Bucharest publishing house, in a bilingual English–Romanian edition in 2016. The Romanian text of the book was translated by his wife, the poet and writer Ioana Ieronim-Latham. The book recounts the efforts of Dr. Bayne, a decorated naval officer, to aid their war effort, as a surgeon, when the Romanians entered World War I in 1916. Professor Latham, who lectures at the Foreign Service Institute of the United States Department of State, is a graduate of Dartmouth College, received his M.A. degree at Roosevelt University, and holds a doctorate in history from the University of Bucharest. He has held numerous diplomatic posts throughout the Middle East, the Balkans, and Eastern and Western Europe and has taught in the United States of America and at a number of European universities.

Dr. Latham is also the subject of a book published in October 2016 by the Romanian publishing house Editura Militară, Dosarul de securitate al unui diplomat american: Ernest H. Latham Jr., 1979–1987, containing a redaction of the mammoth five-volume, 3,000-page collection of files on him, during his diplomatic assignment at the United States Embassy, by the Romanian Communist Securitate, the dreaded secret police organization under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu. The book, edited by the Romanian military historian Vadim Guzun, contains an introduction by Professor Latham, describing his four years of diplomatic service in Communist Romania.

We congratulate Dr. Latham on these two significant honors, which are a tribute to his scholarly and diplomatic career and which bring great pride to our Seminary and to his fellow faculty.