Charles S. Maier served as director of Harvard University’s Center for European Studies from 1994 to 2001 and again in fall 2006, as chair of the undergraduate Social Studies Program from 1991 to 1995, and as acting chair in 2007-08. He was also Guest Directeur des Etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, in Paris in spring 2007. At Harvard, he teaches undergraduate courses on world history in the modern era, on World War I and World War II, on political trials, and, together with Niall Ferguson, a two-semester sequence on international history.

Maier supervises graduate reading fields in early modern and modern international history, modern social and economic history, and German and Italian history. He has directed dissertations on the comparative history of the welfare state, aspects of the Nazi Regime, and the history of the German Democratic Republic, among other topics, and encourages research in the era since 1945.