[1] In high school he met Harvard University administrator Henry Chauncey, who spotted his talent and arranged for him to spend his senior year at Phillips Academy.
[4] Upon graduation in 1943, he was commissioned as an ensign in the United States Navy, serving in the Caribbean, the South West Pacific theatre of World War II, and Iwo Jima.
In 1950 he returned to Harvard to write his PhD dissertation on "Tumulty and the Wilson Era" under the direction of Frederick Merk.
[11] Other prominent students of his include Professor Henry Louis Gates, who considered Blum to be his mentor,[12] as well as Professor Laura Kalman (University of California, Santa Barbara),[13] Steve Gillon, resident historian of the History Channel, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, and Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman.
Blum was also prolific as an editor, serving as co-editor of The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (8 vols., 1951–1954), edited by Elting E. Morison.
In 1980 Blum published Liberty, Justice, Order: Writings on Past Politics, 13 essays containing profiles of 10 political leaders representing the first seven decades of the 20th century, including Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Croly, Mark Hanna, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry Wallace, Archibald MacLeish, Walter Lippman, and Earl Warren, bringing out their efforts to foster social justice and economic equality.