A Norwich University Historian Is Now Streaming on Netflix
Ted Kohn, one of the country's leading Theodore Roosevelt scholars, appears throughout the History Channel's "Theodore Roosevelt" — newly added to Netflix ahead of the nation's 250th anniversary.
When Netflix added a wave of History Channel presidential documentaries on May 18, timed to the country’s 250th anniversary, the lineup included a familiar Vermont face. “Theodore Roosevelt,” the two-part, five-hour portrait of the 26th president, features Edward “Ted” Kohn — a professor of history at Norwich University — as one of its recurring expert voices.
On screen, Kohn is credited simply as “Professor of History, Norwich University.” Off screen, he also serves as dean of the university’s College of Arts and Sciences and ranks among the foremost Roosevelt scholars working today. His books on Roosevelt include Hot Time in the Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt, Heir to the Empire City: New York and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt, and A Most Glorious Ride: The Diaries of Theodore Roosevelt, 1877–1886 — the first time Roosevelt’s early diaries appeared in print.
The series keeps heavyweight company. It was executive produced by Pulitzer Prize–winning presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, and drawn from Goodwin’s bestseller Leadership: In Turbulent Times. British actor Rufus Jones plays Roosevelt in the dramatized sequences, while the analysis comes from a roster of historians that includes Douglas Brinkley, H.W. Brands, and Khalil Gibran Muhammad — along with Roosevelt’s great-grandson, Tweed Roosevelt. Kohn is among the experts threaded throughout.
His road to the project ran through several continents. A Chicago native, Kohn earned his bachelor’s degree at Harvard and his Ph.D. in history at McGill University, then spent fourteen years in Ankara, Turkey, chairing the American Culture and Literature department at Bilkent University before joining Norwich in 2017. His Roosevelt work has put him in front of national audiences before — on NPR’s “Fresh Air” and on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” Much of his scholarship centers on the young Roosevelt and the New York years that shaped him, the formative stretch the documentary traces from a sickly childhood to the governor’s mansion and beyond.
“Theodore Roosevelt” landed on Netflix as part of a larger America-250 release that also brought the History Channel’s “Washington,” “Abraham Lincoln,” “Grant,” and “FDR” to the platform. For Vermont viewers cueing up the Roosevelt installment, one of the experts breaking down the president’s life teaches right here in the state — at Norwich University.