Dr. Rob Havers

Meet the New CEO

By John M. Coski

The road to Richmond for the American Civil War Museum’s new CEO, Dr. Rob Havers, began in London, wound through Cambridge and Sandhurst, and vaulted the Atlantic to Fulton, Missouri, before leading to Virginia. After a side-trip to Chicago and a disruptive Year of COVID, Havers picks up the ACWM’s leadership reins as this issue goes to press.

Dr. Havers’ career has featured a comfortable symbiosis of academic and public history, and has demonstrated consistent success as administrator, fundraiser, and communicator. The seeds for that career were planted long before.

“I have had an interest in history for as long as I can remember,” Havers explained. “Sharing the interest and passion, as my career path attests, began in the classroom but has morphed into the realm of public history and museums and cultural institutions. To my mind, the opportunities to engage and excite people about history via an historic site or visitor experience is significant.”

“The committee was thrilled that Rob was interested in our position,” remarked the ACWM Board of Directors Search Committee Chair Walter S. Robertson III. “We had an outstanding group of candidates, but Rob really stood out as that experienced leader who could take us to a new level and build on the outstanding jobs of his predecessors. Rob has a love for and dedication to history and what it can teach today.”

Havers earned his B.A. in History and Politics from Queen Mary College, University of London, his M.A. in Later Modern British History from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and his Ph.D. from Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. His academic concentration was in the history of World War II, and his doctoral dissertation and first book were about Japanese prison camps in Southeast Asia.

After several years teaching military and international history at Cambridge, The London School of Economics and Political Science, and the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, Dr. Havers received a Fulbright Award as a Visiting Professor of British History at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. It was there, of course, that Winston Churchill delivered his “Iron Curtain” address in 1946. Appropriately, it was the man who personified Britain in World War II and who was the son of an American mother who led Dr. Havers across the Atlantic and into the museum profession.

Havers continued to serve as assistant professor of history at Westminster when he became executive director of the college’s Winston Churchill Memorial (subsequently The National Churchill Museum) in 2004. For ten years he was immersed in the nuts-and-bolts operations of an institution that interprets the largerthan-life Churchill to an ever-changing public.

In 2014, Havers took on a similar role at a museum and library dedicated to educating the public about an American World War II figure who rarely receives the attention he deserves: General George C. Marshall of Virginia. As president and CEO of the George C. Marshall Foundation, located on the post of Marshall’s alma mater, the Virginia Military Institute, Havers solidified the institution’s finances and initiated an ambitious series of outreach and educational programs.

He branched out to a more general study of American military history early in 2019 as President and CEO of the Pritzker Military Museum and Library in downtown Chicago. Concentrating on the study of the American Citizen-Soldier and the wider meaning of military service, Pritzker emphasizes innovative public programming, including an in-house television production studio and a weekly PBS TV show.

The vacancy at the helm of the new American Civil War Museum offered a challenge Havers was keen to take on.

“The American Civil War Museum was an entity I knew from my time in Virginia and the new organization and what has grown from its parent entities is extremely impressive and more than the sum of its constituent parts,” Havers said. “The opportunity to come back to Virginia, to bring the Civil War to life for new generations was one that I had to take. I look forward to leading this institution to national and, indeed, international prominence and to telling the complex, controversial but ultimately inspiring story of the Civil War to new generations of Americans.”

Search Committee Chair Robertson echoed Havers. “Rob’s résumé and track record of success were impressive but more so was his understanding and dedication to the importance of our mission. We are extremely excited about our future with a new building, our recently completed capital campaign, and now this exceptional new leader in Rob Havers.”