Walter Fredrick LaFeber (August 30, 1933March 9, 2021) was an American academic who served as the Andrew H. and James S. Tisch Distinguished University Professor in the Department of History at Cornell University. Previous to that he served as the Marie Underhill Noll Professor of History and a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell. LaFeber was one of the United States' most distinguished scholars of the history of U.S. foreign policy, and a leading member of the "Wisconsin School" of American diplomatic history. He was known for providing widely read revisionist histories of the Cold War with views like William Appleman Williams but more subtle; the label "moderate revisionist" has been applied to him. LaFeber's teaching abilities led to his longstanding undergraduate "History of American Foreign Relations" class at Cornell gaining a reputation as one of the university's best and most popular courses. A number of his students went on to prominent positions in the U.S. government and academia. In 2006 LaFeber gave a farewell lecture before nearly 3,000 colleagues and former students at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. Early life and education LaFeber was born in Walkerton, Indiana, a town of around 2,000 people in the northern part of the state, outside South Bend, on August 30, 1933. His father, Ralph Nichols LaFeber, owned a local grocery store; his mother, Helen (Liedecker), was a housewife. LaFeber worked at his father's store from age eight through the end of college. He became a lifelong fan of the Chicago Cubs. At Walkerton High School, the LaFeber was a star basketball player. In one game during his senior year for the Indians, he scored 35 points, approaching the single-game record for most points scored in the South Bend sectional of the Indiana High School Boys Basketball Tournament. He graduated high school in 1951. LaFeber attended Hanover College, a small Presbyterian liberal arts college in the southern part of Indiana. LaFeber played varsity basketball for the Hanover Panthers, as a reserve forward during his sophomore year. He also played some during his junior year. He sang in the Hanover College Choir, which provided voices for Sunday morning Presbyterian services and also gave concerts around the state, was co-chair of a "Religion in Life" Week program at the college, and was on the Hanover Board of Student Affairs, which directed extracurricular affairs on campus. He belonged to the Beta Theta Pi