John Roosevelt Boettiger
Encyclopedia
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
. He lives in Modum, Norway and Massachusetts.
As a child, he lived with his mother in the White House during World War II with President and Mrs. Roosevelt, his grandparents. His parents divorced in 1949, and his father committed suicide the following year. His mother remarried Dr. James Addison Halsted on November 11, 1952.
Later, as a college student (Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
), he lived and traveled with his grandmother Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
and joined her in work on behalf of the United Nations. He served as national president of the Collegiate Council for the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
from 1958 to 1960.
Boettiger served for 20 years as a professor of human development at Hampshire College
Hampshire College
Hampshire College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1965 as an experiment in alternative education, in association with four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley: Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Massachusetts...
in Amherst, Massachusetts
Amherst, Massachusetts
Amherst is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States in the Connecticut River valley. As of the 2010 census, the population was 37,819, making it the largest community in Hampshire County . The town is home to Amherst College, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts...
, of which he was founding faculty member. He created and was chairman of Hampshire's interdisciplinary Human Development Program. Leaving Hampshire to work with graduate students in clinical psychology, he was a professor of psychology and dean of student affairs at the California School of Professional Psychology in San Francisco and Berkeley, California.
He is chairman of the board of The Christopher Reynolds Foundation, on whose board he has served for over 30 years. Trained as a political scientist at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
before moving to a career in psychology, he taught at his alma mater Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
, was a consultant to and member of the Social Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and briefly served as a desk officer at the United States Department of State
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
. He holds a Ph.D in clinical and developmental psychology.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Boettiger wrote on educational and political themes, including two books on United States policy in Vietnam. He has an interest in the intersections of social history, narrative and psychology, themes explored in his biography of his parents' lives: A Love in Shadow, published by W.W. Norton. Grandfather, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was 32nd president of the United States with first lady, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.
He lives in Norway and consults at Modum Bad Psychiatric Center in Vikersund, Norway. He has four children
- Adam Boettiger
- Sara Boettiger
- Joshua Boettiger
- Paul Boettiger
and seven grandchildren. He is married to Leigh McCullough, Ph.D, who is Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Research Institute, Modum Bad Psychiatric Center, Vikersund, Norway.