A native Oregonian, Dr. Pederson was born and reared in Eugene, home of the University of Oregon, where he earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees. After serving in the U.S. Army, he returned to the University of Oregon to complete his graduate work in political science, as well as work at the U.S. Department of State and the National Institutes of Health. He accepted his first university faculty position in 1977.
In late 1982, Dr Pederson became the founding director of the International Lincoln Center for American Studies at Louisiana State University in Shreveport. Today the multidisciplinary American Studies program includes an annual Abraham Lincoln Lecture (which in 1999 became the first LSUS event ever televised by C-SPAN), an annual Forum (including the South=s first presidential conference series), and the popular, annual Washington, D.C. mini-semester (the first independent one to be established at a public university in the South). In 2002, he was appointed to the national advisory committee to the Commission on the Bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln.
Widely published, Dr. Pederson=s books and articles include numerous studies on American government with emphasis on the presidency, the judiciary (U.S. Supreme Court, civil liberties), the first cross-national study of prison camp revolts, and comparative politics (Russia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia).
In 1999 Dr. Pederson was named the American Studies Chair in Liberal Arts, the first endowed chair established at LSU in Shreveport.
