Author Archives: Revilo Oliver

Revilo Pendleton Oliver (1908–1994), Professor of Classics at the University of Illinois, was a man of stunning erudition: he read eleven languages, including Sanskrit, and for more than half a century wrote scholarly articles in four languages for leading academic publications in the United States and Europe. Born in Texas, Revilo Oliver received his undergraduate degree at Pomona College and his doctorate at the University of Illinois under William Abbot Oldfather. His first book was The Little Clay Cart, an annotated translation of the Sanskrit Mrcchakatika, published by the University of Illinois in 1938.

During World War II, he was Director of Research in a highly secret cryptographic agency of the War Department in Washington, DC, and was cited for outstanding service to his country. After his work for the War Department, Dr. Oliver was awarded a Guggenheim Post-Service Fellowship, and during the years 1953 and 1954 he traveled to Italy on a Fulbright Research Fellowship to study Italian Renaissance manuscripts.

In 1954, alarmed by the ongoing political subversion of the United States, Professor Oliver threw himself into conservative activism. He participated in the creation of National Review magazine; he was one of the founders of the John Birch Society; he made numerous speeches before patriotic groups; he wrote hundreds of articles and reviews. His disillusion with the conservative movement is chronicled in his book America’s Decline: The Education of a Conservative. Eventually, he abandoned conservatism and became an avowed racial nationalist.