Leadership in the Black American Community: Reflections on the Past, Analysis of the Present, and Visions for the Future. Participants include John Conyers (MI), Chair of House Judiciary Committee; Barbara Lee (CA), Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus; Danny Davis (IL); Diane Watson (CA); Wole Coaxum '92, Senior VP at JP Morgan Chase; Bill Cosby, and Williams Spriggs '77, Assistant Secretary for Policy, Department of Labor. Sponsored by Leadership Studies, Africana Studies, the President's Office and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.
Workers and the Poor: Lessons for Organizing in the Age of Obama
November 12, 2009 at Griffin Hall, Room 7
Lecture by Wade Rathke, co-founder of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 100. Rathke was ACORN's chief organizer from its founding in 1970 until he stepped down in June 2008. He is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Social Policy, a quarterly magazine for scholars and activists, and he is the author of Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families (2009).
U.S. Cuba Relations in the Twenty-First Century
November 04, 2009 at Griffin Hall, Room 7
Julia E. Sweig is the Nelson and David Rockefeller senior fellow for Latin America Studies and
director for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
She is the author of Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2009) and Friendly
Fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century (PublicAffairs, 2006), as well as
numerous publications on Latin America and American foreign policy. She has directed several
Council on Foreign Relations reports on Latin America. Dr. Sweig’s Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel
Castro and the Urban Underground (Harvard University Press, 2002) received the American Historical
Association’s Herbert Feis Award for best book of the year by an independent scholar.
Dr. Sweig serves on the International Advisory Board of the Brazilian Center for International
Relations (CEBRI), on the editorial board of Foreign Affairs Latinoame�?rica, and from 1999-2008,
served as a consultant on Latin American affairs for The Aspen Institute’s Congressional Program.
She frequently provides commentary for the major television, radio, and print media, speaking in both
English and Spanish. She holds a BA from the University of California and an MA and PhD from the
Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
The third in a series of talks on The Cuban Revolution: 50 Years Later.
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iranian filmmaker, will screen two of her most recent films. Discussion with Bani-Etemad to follow. Monday, Nov.2 at 6:30 pm in Paresky auditorium. Angels of the House of Sun is a documentary about a women’s shelter in one of Teheran’s poorest neighborhoods (2009). We are Half of Iran’s Population takes place shortly before the June Presidential election and provides an extraordinarily intimate glimpse into the current situation in Iran (2009).
China Rising
October 14, 2009 at MainStage, '62 Center for Theatre and Dance
A national correspondent for The Atlantic, James Fallows is one of America's most respected journalists. He has won the National Book Award, the American Book Award and the National Magazine Award. Based in China since 2006, he is chronicling that country's explosive growth and its staggering ramifications for America and the world. Fallows is the author of several books, including Breaking the News, about the crisis facing contemporary news media, and Blind into Baghdad, about the lead-up to the War in Iraq, which is now required reading in many military programs. His most recent book is Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China. Admission free but tickets are required. Contact the '62 Center box office, Tues.-Sat. 1-5 p.m., 597-2425.
Imagining Cuba: Metaphor and Narratives of Power
October 01, 2009 at Griffin Hall, Room 6
Lecture by Louis Perez, J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History and Director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas, part of the Global Education Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Perez will address the multiple representations of Cuba in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, and how the different representations of the island corresponded to the evolving needs of U.S. national interests. The second in a series of talks on The Cuban Revolution: 50 Years Later.
Race and Revolution in Castro's Cuba
September 24, 2009 at Paresky Performance Space
An ethnologist and political scientist with two doctorates from the prestigious University of Paris-7, France, Dr. Carlos Moore is an expert on the impact of race and ethnicity on domestic politics and inter-state affairs, and a leader in the ongoing global discussion on the topic of race, particularly race in Latin America. His 2008 book Pichón: Race and Revolution in Castro’s Cuba, A Memoir recounts his life of devastating poverty, racism, and his fight for justice; the book traces his imprisonment and eventual exile for speaking out against Fidel Castro and his return to Cuba 30 years later. His other books include A Africa que Incomoda; Racismo e Sociedade; Castro, the Blacks, and Africa; Fela: This Bitch of a Life; and Cette Putain de Vie. Moore is currently at work on Race: The Last Frontier of Hatred, which summarizes his three decades of research, conducted around the world, on the impact of race on society. The first in a series of talks on The Cuban Revolution: 50 Years Later.
Williams/H-Diplo Conference on New Scholarship in American Foreign Relations
April 18, 2009 at Griffin Hall, Room 3
9:00-10:30 p.m. Roundtable #1 - World Out of Balance
Authors: Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, Dartmouth College
Chair: James McAllister, Williams College
Panelists: Stacie Goddard, Wellesley College
Jeff Legro, University of Virginia
Randall Schweller, The Ohio State University
10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Roundtable #2 – Inventing Vietnam: The United States and State Building, 1954-1968
Author: James M. Carter, Drew University
Chair: Jessica Chapman, Williams College
Panelists: Scott Laderman, University of Minnesota
Fredrik Logevall, Cornell University
Edward Miller, Dartmouth College
Jessica Elkind, San Francisco State University
1:45-3:15 p.m. Roundtable #3 - Occupational Hazards: Success & Failure in Military Occupation
Author: David Edelstein, Georgetown University
Chair: Paul Macdonald, Williams College
Panelists: David Ekbladh, Tufts University
Peter Liberman, City University of New York
Greg Mitrovich, Columbia University
Gideon Rose, Managing Editor, Foreign Affairs
3:30-5:00 p.m. Roundtable #4 – Nexus: Strategic Communications and American Security in World War I
Author: Jonathan Reed Winkler, Wright State University
Chair: Mark Stoler, Williams College
Panelists: John Milton Cooper, University of Wisconsin
Ross Kennedy, Illinois State University
Alex Roland, Duke University
Phyllis Soybel, College of Lake County, IL
Vietnam and Iraq
April 16, 2009 at Griffin Hall, Room 6
Marc Lynch, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University and Fredrik Logevall, Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, Field of History at Cornell University.
Professor Lynch received his B.A. in Political Science from Duke University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. He teaches courses on Middle Eastern politics and international relations. He is the author of State Interests and Public Spheres: The International Politics of Jordan's Identity (1999) and Voices of the New Arab Public (2006). He blogs at http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/
Fredrik Logevall joined the Cornell Department of History in 2004. He previously taught at UC Santa Barbara, where he co-founded the Center for Cold War Studies. A specialist on U.S. foreign relations, Professor Logevall teaches a range of courses covering the history of U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy, as well as the international history of the Cold War and the Vietnam Wars. His current research projects include an interpretive history of "America's Cold War" (co-authored with Campbell Craig and forthcoming from Belknap Press/Harvard UP) and a book-length study of the struggle for Indochina after 1940. In 2006-07 he was Leverhulme Professor of History at the University of Nottingham and Mellon Senior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge.
Why Vietnam Matters
April 14, 2009 at Griffin Hall, Room 6
Rufus Phillips became a member of the Saigon Military Mission in 1954 and the following year served as the sole adviser to two Vietnamese army pacification operations, earning the CIA's Intelligence Medal of Merit for his work. He later worked as a CIA civilian case officer in Vietnam and Laos, then joined the U.S. Agency for International Development's Saigon Mission to lead its counterinsurgency efforts. In 1964 he became a consultant for USAID and the State Department and served as an adviser to Vice President Hubert Humphrey. He is the author of Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned (2008), in which Phillips describes in first-hand detail such figures as John F. Kennedy, Maxwell Taylor, Robert McNamara, Henry Cabot Lodge, Hubert Humphrey, and Ngo Dinh Diem.
Iraq: The Lost Generation
April 11, 2009 at Paresky Performance Space
In the past five years more than four million Iraqis - 20 per cent of the entire population - have been driven from their homes as a result of the war and sectarian bloodshed. Two million have become exiles, living desperate lives across the border in Syria and Jordan. This edition of Dispatches investigates the biggest and most catastrophic refugee crisis in the Middle East since the Palestinian diaspora of 1948.
Award-winning journalist Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy travels to Syria and Jordan to investigate the plight of Iraqi refugees. These are the very people on whom the new, democratic Iraq was to be built - the professional middle classes - nearly half of whom now live as desperate refugees, driven out by the violence and civil breakdown.
Film will be preceded by a panel on Iraqi refugees and followed by a reception in the Henze Lounge.
Update from Iraq
April 10, 2009 at Griffin Hall, Room 3
Nir Rosen is a journalist who has written extensively on American policy toward Afghanistan and Iraq. He spent more than two years in Iraq reporting on the American occupation, the relationship between Americans and Iraqis, the development of postwar Iraqi religious and political movements, interethnic and sectarian relations, and the Iraqi civil war. His reporting and research also focused on the origins and development of Islamist resistance, insurgency, and terrorist organizations. Mr. Rosen covered the elections in Afghanistan and the differences between the American presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has also reported from Somalia, where he investigated Islamist movements; Jordan, where he investigated the origins and future of the Zarqawi movement; and Pakistan, where he investigated the madrassas and pro-Taliban movements. Mr. Rosen’s book on postwar Iraq, In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq, was published by Free Press in 2006. He has written for The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The New Republic, Boston Review, Time, Mother Jones, and World Policy Journal.
For integrated programming on Iraq through the '62 Center for Theatre and Dance, April 13-20, see
http://62center.williams.edu/62center/event.cfm?eid=210
Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt: Anglo American Leadership in WWII
March 07, 2009 at Griffin Hall, Room 3
Students from The Age of Roosevelt (History 358 and Leadership 258) will participate in open seminars. Members of the college community, as well as the public, are welcome to observe. Students who wish to participate actively in the seminars should contact Prof. Mark Stoler at Mark.A.Stoler@williams.edu. This event is sponsored by the Williams College Program in Leadership Studies, The Churchill Centre, and The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.
Seminar sessions run as follows:
9:15-10:45 AM: Churchill and Roosevelt Before Pearl Harbor
Professor John Maurer, United States Naval War College
11:00-12:30 PM: Roosevelt and Churchill at War
Professor Mark Stoler, Williams College
1:30-3:00 PM: Thinking About and Planning for the Postwar World
Professor Warren Kimball, Rutgers University
U.S. Strategy in Iraq: Past, Present, and Future
October 06, 2008 at Griffin Hall, Room 3
Stephen Biddle is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Award-winning author of Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle, Biddle is a former Associate Professor and Elihu Root Chair of Military Studies at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute. His areas of expertise include U.S. national security policy, military strategy, the conduct of war, technology in modern warfare, and recent operations in the war on terror.
The Past and Future of the People's Republic: Will Capitalism Bring Democracy to China?
September 29, 2008 at Griffin Hall, Room 3
Panel discussion with Sherman Cochran, Hu Shih Professor in the Department of History at Cornell University and a leading authority on modern China with major contributions to the scholarship on Chinese economic, business, and social history; Sam Crane, Fred Greene Third Century Professor of Political Science, specializing in the politics of East Asia and international political economy; Michael Hunt, Stanley Kaplan Visiting Professor of American Foreign Policy, specializing in U.S. involvement in China and Vietnam. Sponsored by the Stanley Kaplan Program in American Foreign Policy and International Studies.
Iran: Continuity & Change
April 30, 2008 at Griffin Hall, Room 7
Iran: Continuity & Change
Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. His areas of
specialization are Iran, the Persian Gulf, and U.S. foreign policy. He is also a contributing editor of the
National Interest.
Dr. Takeyh was previously professor of national security studies at the National War College; professor and
director of studies at the Near East and South Asia Center, National Defense University; fellow in
international security studies at Yale University; fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and
fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Takeyh is currently working on a book entitled The Guardians of the Revolution: Iran’s Approach to the
World (under contract by Oxford University Press). He is the author of a number of previous books including
Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic (Times Books, 2006) and The Origins of the
Eisenhower Doctrine: The U.S., Britain and Nasser’s Egypt, 1953–1957 (MacMillan Press, 2000). Dr.
Takeyh has published widely, including articles in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the National Interest,
Survival, World Policy Journal, Washington Quarterly, Orbis, Middle East Journal, Political Science
Quarterly, and Middle East Policy. His commentary has also been featured in many newspapers, including
the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, and International Herald
Tribune.
Dr. Takeyh has testified frequently at various congressional committees and has appeared on The NewsHour
with Jim Lehrer, The Charlie Rose Show, NBC, CBS, CNN, BBC, FOX, and C-SPAN.
Dr. Takeyh earned a doctorate in modern history from Oxford University.
FDR and Election 2008
April 29, 2008 at Griffin Hall, Room 3
FDR and Election 2008
"Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Election of 2008," Jonathan Alter, Senior Editor, Newsweek.
Since 1991, Jonathan Alter has written a widely-acclaimed Newsweek column that examines politics, media and social and global issues. Alter is also an originator and author of the weekly “Conventional Wisdom Watch,�? which uses up, down and sideways arrows to measure and lampoon the news. As an editor, he helps shape the magazine’s overall news coverage.
Alter has covered the last six presidential campaigns for Newsweek. He frequently interviews American presidents and other world leaders, regularly breaks news and has authored more than 50 Newsweek cover stories. Over the years, he has written extensively about party politics, patriotism, anti-Semitism, weapons of mass destruction, at-risk children, and a wide variety of other issues.
His new book, “The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope,�? will be published by Simon and Schuster in May, 2006.
Since 1996, Alter has also been a contributing correspondent for NBC News, where he appears regularly on all NBC broadcasts including “TODAY,�? “NBC Nightly News,�? NBC News specials, MSNBC and CNBC. In spring 1997, Alter was the Ferris Visiting Professor of Press and Politics at Princeton University.
Alter has earned many awards for his political columns, including a prize from the National Headliner Awards for Special Column on One Subject for a series of columns on life after 9/11. He was also part of the teams of Newsweek reporters and editors awarded the prestigious National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 1993, 2002, 2004. He received the John Bartlow Martin Award in 2001 for his reporting on the death penalty. Alter also received the 1994 Clarion Award from Women in Communications for Best Magazine Opinion Column, and the 1993 National Headliner Award for Consistently Outstanding Feature Column.
His many awards for media criticism include the 1987 Lowell Mellett Award and two New York State Bar Association Media Awards. In 1995, Alter was selected as one of the nation’s most influential media critics in a survey of leading media executives and scholars published by the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University. He also won the 1987 Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business Reporting, and a Mentoring USA Award for encouraging mentoring.
Alter joined Newsweek as an associate editor in the Nation section in March 1983, and became media critic the following year. He was named a senior writer in February 1987 and a senior editor in September 1991. For two years prior to joining Newsweek, Alter was an editor at The Washington Monthly. He has also been a freelance writer for such publications as The New Republic, Esquire, and The New York Times.
A Chicago native, Alter received his B.A. in history with honors from Harvard in 1979. He is married to Emily Lazar. They live in New Jersey with their children.
LBJ and Domestic Policy
April 24, 2008 at Griffin Hall, Room 3
James T. Patterson '57 to speak on LBJ
"The Great Arm-Twister: LBJ and Domestic Policy," James T. Patterson '57, Ford Foundation Professor of History emeritus at Brown University.
James T. Patterson is the Ford Foundation Professor of History emeritus at Brown University, where he has taught for 30 years. His research interests include political, legal and social history, as well as the history of medicine, race relations and education.
While teaching at Indiana University from 1964 to 1972, he published "Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal," "The New Deal and the States: Federalism in Transition," and "Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft." He received the Frederick Jackson Turner Book Prize from the Organization of American Historians in 1966 and the Indiana University Teaching Award in 1968, as well as two National Endowment for Humanities Fellowships and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
In 1972, Patterson joined the faculty of Brown University. His publications during that period include "America's Struggle Against Poverty, 1900–1980;" "The Dread Disease: Cancer and Modern American Culture;" "Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974," which won the Bancroft Prize for American History in 1997; "Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy;" and "Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore." Several of his books have been History Book Club selections.
He was elected a member of the Society of American Historians in 1974 and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997.
In From the Cold: Richard Betts and the Renaissance of Intelligence Studies
April 12, 2008 at Griffin Hall, Room 3
In From the Cold: Richard Betts and the Renaissance of Intelligence Studies
The September 11 attacks and the war in Iraq have raised a number of questions about U.S. intelligence.
• Why did the intelligence community fail to prevent 9/11?
• How do policymakers use intelligence to make decisions about war and peace?
• Should Americans be willing to sacrifice their civil liberties in the name of national security?
Richard Betts explores these questions and others in his critically-acclaimed recent book, "Enemies of Intelligence."
Betts is the Arnold Saltzman Professor of War and Peace Studies in the Department of Political Science, the director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies, and the director of the International Security Policy Program in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.
Betts has taught at Harvard University and was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution until 1990. A former staff member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the National Security Council, and the Walter Mondale presidential campaign, Betts has been a consultant to the National Intelligence Council and Central Intelligence Agency.
On Saturday, April 12, the Leadership Studies Program at Williams College will bring together leading intelligence scholars to discuss Betts's work and offer insights about the future of U.S. intelligence. The conference will feature a range of academic experts along with representatives from the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The public is invited and the event is free.
Saturday, April 12 – Griffin Hall, room 3
9:00-10:30 - Intelligence and Foreign Policy
Chair: Joshua Rovner, Williams College;
James Wirtz, Naval Postgraduate School;
Paul Pillar, Georgetown University;
Thomas Mahnken, Department of Defense;
Glenn Hastedt, James Madison University
10:45-12:15 - Surprise Attack and Intelligence Reform
Chair: Richard Gid Powers, College of Staten Island;
Richard Russell, National Defense University;
Arthur Hulnick, Boston University;
Stephen Marrin, Mercyhurst College;
Erik Dahl, Harvard University
2:15-3:45 –Secrecy and Democracy
Chair: Stephanie Kaplan, MIT;
James Bruce, RAND;
David Kaiser, Naval War College;
Ted Gup, Case Western Reserve University
The conference is sponsored by both the Stanley Kaplan Program in American Foreign Policy and the Leadership Studies Program at Williams.
World War II Reconsidered
March 08, 2008 at Griffin Hall, Room 3
Word War II Reconsidered
Saturday, March 8 – Griffin Hall, Room 3
9-10:30 AM: Roundtable #1--"Japanese Strategy in the Pacific"
Chair: Waldo Heinrichs, Temple University
Panelists: James Wood, Williams College;
Richard Frank, Independent Scholar;
Edward Drea, U.S. Army Center for Military History, retired;
Mark Parillo, Kansas State University
10:45-12:15 PM: Roundtable # 2—"Allied Airpower Strategies"
Chair: Malcolm Muir, Virginia Military Institute
Panelists: Conrad Crane, US Army Military History Institute;
Tami Davis Biddle, Army War College;
Reina Pennington, Norwich University
1:45-3:15 PM: Roundtable #3—"Allied Strategic and Diplomatic Relations"
Chair: Arnold Offner, Lafayette College
Panelists: Frank Costigliola, University of Connecticut;
Randall Woods, University of Arkansas;
Theodore Wilson, University of Kansas;
J. Garry Clifford, University of Connecticut
3:30-5:00 PM: Roundtable #4—"What Remains to be Done?"
Chair: Mark Stoler, Williams College
Panelists: Gerhard Weinberg, University of North Carolina;
Allan Millett, University of New Orleans;
Raymond Callahan, University of Delaware
Additional Conference Participants:
Andrew Buchanan, University of Vermont;
Marc Gallicchio, Villanova University;
Gian Gentile, US Military Academy;
Meredith Hindley, American University;
Timothy Jackson, Naval War College;
Paul Miles, Princeton University;
Galen Perras, University of Ottowa;
Kurt Piehler, University of Tennessee;
Michael Pavelec, Naval War College;
Steven Ross, Naval War College;
Nick Sarantakes, Naval War College;
Douglas Smith, Naval War College;
Roger Spiller, US Military Academy;
Robert VanMeter, Skidmore College;
Steven Waddell, US Military Academy;
David Woolner, Marist College and FDR Library
This conference is sponsored by the Stanley Kaplan Program in American Foreign
Policy and the Program in Leadership Studies.
"The Day of Battle: History, Memory, and Writing About War"
March 07, 2008 at Brooks-Rogers Recital hall
Pulitzer Prize-winning and Best Selling author, Rick Atkinson, to speak
Rick Atkinson the best-selling author of The Long Gray Line, a narrative account about West Point’s class of 1966; Crusade, a narrative history of the Persian Gulf War; and An Army at Dawn, the first volume in the Liberation Trilogy, a narrative history of the American Army in North Africa, Italy, and Western Europe during the Second World War. His book about the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq, In the Company of Soldiers, was published in March 2004. The second volume of the Liberation Trilogy, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, was published in Oct. 2007. The New York Times called it “a triumph of narrative history, elegantly written…and rooted in the sight and sounds of battle."
Atkinson’s awards include the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting; the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for public service, awarded to The Post for a series of investigative articles directed and edited by Atkinson on shootings by the District of Columbia police department; the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for history; and the 1989 George Polk Award for national reporting. Atkinson is on extended book leave from The Washington Post, where his most recent assignments were covering the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and writing about roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007.
"Understanding the Middle East: The United States and the Role of Tribalism"
November 15, 2007 at Griffin 7
Dr Yoav Alon is a senior lecturer in modern history of the Middle East at Tel Aviv University. He wrote his doctoral thesis in Oxford University on the creation of the modern Jordanian state under the British mandate and the integration of the tribal population into the modern structures of the new state. He teaches, researches, lectures and publishes on topics such as Jordanian history and politics, the British Empire in the Middle East, the Palestine mandate and tribal societies in the modern Middle East. His book The Making of Jordan: Tribes, Colonialism and the Modern State has been published in London by IB Tauris earlier this year.
"The Battle for Baghdad"
October 02, 2007 at 'CTD MainStage
John Burns is currently London Bureau Chief for the New York Times. He is the longest-serving foreign correspondent in The New York Times' history, having worked for more than 30 years on assignment in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Among his many awards, Burns has won two Pulitzer prizes: in 1993 for his coverage of the siege and destruction of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, and again in 1997 for his coverage of the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan.This event is free but tickets are required. Contact the '62 Center box office to reserve tickets: 413-597-2425. Box office hours are Tues.-Fri. 1-5 p.m. Sponsored by the Stanley Kaplan Program in American Foreign Policy and the Leadership Studies Program.
For decades, the Commonwealth of Virginia led the nation. The premier state in population, size, and wealth, it produced a galaxy of leaders: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Mason, Marshall. Four of the first five presidents were Virginians. And yet by the middle of the nineteenth century, Virginia had become a byword for slavery, provincialism, and poverty. What happened? In her remarkable book, Dominion of Memories, historian Susan Dunn reveals the little known story of the decline of the Old Dominion. While the North rapidly industrialized and democratized, Virginia's leaders turned their backs on the accelerating modern world. Spellbound by the myth of aristocratic, gracious plantation life, they waged an impossible battle against progress and time itself. In their last years, two of Virginia's greatest sons, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, grappled vigorously with the Old Dominion's plight. But bound to the traditions of their native soil, they found themselves grievously torn by the competing claims of state and nation, slavery and equality, the agrarian vision and the promises of economic development and prosperity. This fresh and penetrating examination of Virginia's struggle to defend its sovereignty, traditions, and unique identity encapsulates, in the history of a single state, the struggle of an entire nation drifting inexorably toward Civil War.
- The Perseus Book Group
Mark Stoler, Stanley Kaplan Visiting Professor of American Foreign Policy 2007-2008
August 02, 2007
Mark A. Stoler is Professor of History at the University of Vermont. He earned his B.A. at the City College of New York and his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin. He is the author of The Politics of the Second Front: American Military Planning and Diplomacy in Coalition Warfare, 1941-1943 (1977), George C. Marshall: Soldier-Statesman of the American Century (1989) and Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and U.S. Strategy in World War II (2000), which won the 2002 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History. He is co-author of Explorations in American History: A Skills Approach (1987), Major Problems in the History of World War II (2002), and Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt's Foreign Policies, 1933-1945 (2005). His most recent monograph is Allies in War: Britain and America against the Axis Powers, 1940-1945.
Since 1970, Stoler has taught at the University of Vermont, where he has been honored for his scholarship with the University Scholar Award (1993), as well as his teaching, with the George V. Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award (1984), the Dean's Lecture Award (1992), and the Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award (2006). In addition, he held the Harold K. Johnson Visiting Chair at the U.S. Military History Institute in Carlisle, PA in 2004-5. He has also served as a visiting professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the U.S. Naval War College, and at the University of Haifa in Israel under the Fulbright Program. Stoler has served on the SHAFR Council (2000-2002), the nominating committee (1991-1994), the annual conference planning committee (1989-1990), the Bernath Book Prize committee (1988-1991), and the membership committee (1974-1984). Other service includes a term on the Board of Editors for Diplomatic History (1986-1989) as well as the Army's Historical Advisory Committee (1996-2000). Stoler currently serves on the Board of Directors for the World War II Studies Association and the Board of Trustees of the Society for Military History.
The New Vietnam War Revisionism: Implications and Lessons
March 03, 2007 at
The New Vietnam War Revisionism: Implications and Lessons
Saturday, March 3, 2007
9:00 am - 4:00 pm
Griffin 3, Williams College
9:00-10:45 am Assessing Triumph Forsaken
Chair: William Stueck - University of Georgia
KC Johnson - Brooklyn College/CUNY Grad Center
David Kaiser - Williams/ Naval War College
Mark Lawrence – Yale/UT Austin
Keith Taylor – Cornell University
11:00 am - 12:45 pm Ngo Dinh Diem and
South Vietnam Reconsidered�?
Chair: Seth Jacobs - Boston College
Philip Catton - Stephen F. Austin University
Jessica Chapman - UC Santa Barbara
Matthew Masur - St. Anselm College
Edward Miller - Dartmouth College
2:00 - 2:30 pm Is Iraq Another Vietnam
A lecture by Robert Brigham
– Vassar College
2:30 – 4:00 pm Roundtable Discussion
on Vietnam and Iraq�?
Chair: Ronald Frankum - Millersville University
J. Gary Clifford - Univ. of Connecticut
Richard Immerman - Temple University
Doug MacDonald – Colgate University
Stephen Morris - Johns Hopkins University
Sponsored by the Stanley Kaplan Program in American Foreign Policy
and the History Department