Among his early scholarly writings were The Democratic Movement in Asia (1918)[4] and A Better World (1920). In 1922, he published Americans in Eastern Asia, a study of American policy in the Far East, which was well received and was long held as an important work in the field. Dennett published "President Roosevelt's Secret Pact with Japan" in 1924, the subject of which came to be known as the Taft–Katsura Agreement. The paper put forth the thesis that formerly-isolationist Japan and the US began to carve up their spheres of influence, which would later become world empires, with the agreement, which was therefore of first-class importance historically.[5] Later historians questioned that interpretation.[6] Dennett was awarded a Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins University in 1925 based on this research on Theodore Roosevelt and the Russo-Japanese War.
He taught American history at Johns Hopkins University (1923–24) and at Columbia University (1927–28), and international relations at Princeton University (1931–34).[citation needed] Most significantly, Dennett served as president of Williams College (1934–37), resigning after a disagreement with the college's board of trustees.[7] The trustees planned to purchase the Greylock Hotel, which later became a dorm, but at the time Dennett felt the hotel had no useful purpose for the college. Dennett was also one of the future college presidents to speak out against Nazi Germany during this period, ending academic exchange programs with Nazi Germany in 1936.[8]
Borg, Dorothy. "Two historians of the Far Eastern policy of the United States: Tyler Dennett and A. Whitney Griswold," in Dorothy Borg and Shumpei Okamoto, eds., Pearl Harbor as History: Japanese-American Relations, 1931-1941 (1975) pp 551–574.
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