Prominent conservative historian, Yale prof

NEW YORK — Donald Kagan, a prominent classical scholar, contentious defender of traditional education and architect of neo-conservative foreign policy, has died at age 89.

Mr. Kagan, a professor emeritus at Yale University and father of historians Robert and Frederick Kagan, died Aug. 6 at a retirement home in Washington, D.C. His death was announced by Yale and confirmed by his sons.

Donald Kagan was a Lithuanian native, raised in New York City, who studied ancient Greece in college and was inspired by the “remarkable assumption that the human being is not trivial.” Regarding himself as Greek to his very soul, he wrote several books either entirely or partly about the rise and fall of Athens’ golden age, notably an acclaimed and popular four-volume series on the devastating Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta.

Mr. Kagan expanded upon his belief that the Peloponnesian conflict held vital contemporary lessons in “On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace,” which came out in 1995. With a narrative reaching from ancient Greece and Rome to the two world wars of the 20th century and the Cold War that followed, he determined that some of the most awful carnage could have been avoided had political leaders confronted aggressors early on. He noted the allies’ hesitation to take on Germany before World War I and World War II. He blamed the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in part on Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s perception that President John F. Kennedy was afraid to use military force.

Through his books, speeches and media commentary, Mr. Kagan became a leading conservative voice in the otherwise liberal field of history, supporting military action abroad and adherence to the Western canon at home. He backed the wars in Vietnam and Iraq and questioned the patriotism of protesters.