A specialist in modern European and international diplomatic history, Paul W. Schroeder was professor emeritus of history at the University of Illinois. Initially ordained as a Lutheran pastor, Schroeder left the ministry in 1954 to attend graduate school, receiving his Ph.D in history from the University of Texas at Austin in 1958. Among Schroeder's awards was a Fulbright (1956–57), a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (1973), and designation as University of Illinois Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences (1992). He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1983–84), a visiting research fellow at Merton College, Oxford (1984), and a visiting scholar at the Mershon Center for International Security at Ohio State University (1998).