Willem Post

Willem Post: an ‘American Dutchman’ available for lectures, articles and commentary in English. 

Mr. Post is one of the leading experts on U.S. politics, society and history in The Netherlands. He is a historian from Leyden University and nowadays commentator for many Dutch media-organizations like Netwerk on Dutch Channel One, Goedemorgen Nederland (Breakfast Newsshow), Radio 1 programs, The Tros Newsshow, Radio Netherlands (worldservice), Het Parool (leading Amsterdam newspaper) and the Algemeen Dagblad (Dutch daily newspaper). He is also commenting frequently for international media like the BBC and VRT Belgium. His lectures (of course also in English) are characterized as anecdotical, humorous and always insightful.  Most recently Mr. Post gave lectures for the U.S. Embassy in The Netherlands, the Rotary in Washington and the national conference of the National Council for International Visitors in Washington D.C. After this speech Mr.. Post was honored with the bronze star of this prestigious organization. Mr. Post is honorary citizen of El Paso, Texas, and Little Rock, Arkansas.

Mr. Post has written hundreds of articles in leading Dutch newspapers and has written five books:

• ‘De Amerikaanse Paradox’. A study about conservatism and liberalism in the Reagan-Bush years.

• ‘John F. Kennedy. De Mythe. De Ontluistering’. A study about president John F. Kennedy. JFK’s charisma, his foreign policy, his policy on race relations and a chapter about the assassination with information about the days Lee Harvey Oswald stayed in Rotterdam. Mr. Post also researched the emotional reactions after the death of the popular president.

• Dollars, Macht en Idealen’, is considered as the first modern handbook on the phenomenon of the U.S. presidency in Western Europe in recent years. Leading newspapers qualified this study as excellent. With historical chapters on the first three famous U.S. presidents, the Constitution and the presidential memorials in especially Washington D.C., presidential campaign strategies and media-techniques.

• ‘Keerpunt. America voor, op en na 11 september’. In this book, written just after the horrible events of ‘nine-eleven’, Mr. Post ‘paints’ a portrait of the courageous people in New York and elsewhere. He describes the outbreak of patriotism in the U.S.. He also writes about the foreign policy implications and predicted already a war in Iraq. The Dutch historian describes the emotional reactions elsewhere in the world, especially in Western Europe.

• 'The White House' 2008

    Few Europeans do have so many contacts in the inner circles of U.S. politics. Just before Orval Faubus died Mr. Post had a long conversation with the Arkansas governor who became world-famous during the Little Rock high-schoolcrisis in 1957. He also interviewed the reverend Billy Kyles, the only person who stood next to dr. Martin Luther King when he was assassinated. In recent years Mr. Post met senator Bob Dole, president Clinton, president Carter and senator Kerry. He is a frequent guest at the Washington think-tanks like the Brookings Institute and the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Post travels  a lot in the U.S. In 1995 he was invited by the U.S. State Department under the prestigious  ‘International Visitors Program’.

   In the days after September 11 Mr. Post almost lived in the television-studio trying to explain what happened and what the short- and long term consequences would be for the U.S. and the rest of the world. In his opinion the world will never be the same. Sadly enough ‘America the Beautiful’ became ‘America the vulnerable’. In his comments Mr. Post always tries to capture the minds of the Americans.