 After the end of the war, he was an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago from 1947 until 1962.He was disappointed when the Fulbright Fellowship that he earned in 1948 to go to China was canceled because of the Communist revolution led by Mao Zedong that was sweeping away the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek at the time.Pritchard never had an opportunity to visit the country he researched and taught about for most of his life, although he did travel to Japan in 1957.