Joel Henry Silbey (August 16, 1933 – August 7, 2018) was an American historian who spent his career at Cornell University and was the President White Professor of History Emeritus there.
Silbey was known for his studies of the history of the United States in the 19th century and especially the Jacksonian era, the creation and evolution of U.S. political parties, the sectional crises of the 1840s and 1850s, and the American Civil War and Reconstruction era.
He attended Brooklyn College in his hometown, graduating in 1955, before pursuing graduate study at the University of Iowa, earning his master's and doctoral degrees in 1956 and 1963, respectively.
[2] A recipient of the Clark Distinguished Faculty Award for undergraduate teaching,[3] the courses Silbey taught included "The United States in the Middle Period, 1815–1850", "The Structure of American Political History", "The American Civil War and Reconstruction", and "Quantitative Approaches in History", as well as freshman, upper-class, and graduate seminars in various aspects of nineteenth-century American political history.
He was appointed President White Professor of History in 1986, serving until retirement in 2002.