Twentieth Century Politics and Society

Founded
1992
Seminar Number
555

The seminar concerns Europe, the United States, and the non-West. It brings together historians, sociologists, political scientists, literary critics, and other scholars to discuss current research on diverse cultural, social, and political theses, especially those that stimulate comparative perspectives.

Seminar Website

Chair
Professor Christopher R. W. Dietrich
cdietrich2@fordham.edu

Rapporteur
Peter Slezkine
pas2186@columbia.edu

Meeting dates and locations are subject to change. Please confirm details with the seminar rapporteur.

Welcome

Meetings

10/11/2018	411 Fayerweather Hall, Columbia University 5:00 PM	Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual Daniel Bessner, University of Washington Abstract Abstract This talk examines the impact of Hans Speier on the rise of the defense intellectual and the creation of the national security state. It argues that the experience of witnessing the rise of the Nazis and the collapse of the Weimar Republic convinced Speier and other German exiles that during moments of existential crisis they could not trust ordinary people to make wise political decisions, and therefore must develop institutions that provided intellectuals with the opportunity to shape foreign policy outside the public's and Congress's purview. This became a defining logic of U.S. foreign policymaking in the early Cold War and remains one today.

11/08/2018	Faculty House, Columbia University 5:00 PM	Iran in the Age of Aryamehr: Late Pahlavi Iran and its Global Entanglements Roham Alvandi, London School of Economics Abstract Abstract In this lecture Dr Roham Alvandi will explore the role of human rights in the origins of the Iranian Revolution. He will examine how both the Pahlavi state and its opponents employed contending narratives of human rights in the 1970s to contest the Iranian Revolution on a global stage.

02/28/2019	Faculty House, Columbia University 5:00 PM	From Mississippi to the Mekong: The Student Non-Violent Committee and the Movement Against the Vietnam War Robyn Spencer, Lehman College, Brooklyn College, and the Graduate Center, CUNY Abstract Abstract This paper recovers the hidden history of how Black Power organizations mobilized against the US war in Vietnam by forging transnational alliances, attending international conferences and networking with Third World revolutionaries and European radicals. It follows activists from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, (SNCC) one of the leading civil rights organizations of the 1960s, from their struggles against racism and white supremacy in the Mississippi Delta to the development of a radical anti-imperialist politic that resulted in several members traveling to the Mekong Delta in Vietnam in 1967.

04/11/2019	Faculty House, Columbia University 5:00 PM	Democracy's Revenge: The People, The Powerful, and the American Political Tradition Tim Shenk, Washington University in St. Louis and Dissent Magazine Abstract Abstract Should American history in the second half of the twentieth century be seen as a time when a “New Deal Order” gave way to a “Neoliberal Order”? Today, an increasing number of historians appear to believe that the answer is yes. It’s a striking change from twenty-five years ago, when Alan Brinkley observed in his path-breaking article “The Problem of American Conservatism” that “twentieth-century conservatism has been something of an orphan in historical scholarship.” Since then, a cottage industry has emerged chronicling the rise of the right and the remaking of the left—in short, the making of neoliberalism. But what do historians miss out when we look at American history through this lens? This talk will address that question by looking at another figure that has become something of an orphan in historical scholarship—the technocrat. Focusing on both the achievements and the failures of technocrats, it will argue, reveals surprising continuity between the age of Roosevelt and the age of Reagan. Such a history does not furnish promising material for a tidy master narrative, but it provides the foundation for an account that has space for both neoliberals and technocrats, along with the host of other actors—including elected officials, political operatives, campaign donors, movement leaders, and ordinary voters—that gave American politics its shape.

2nd Floor, Faculty House, 64 Morningside Drive, MC 2302 New York, NY 10027

Phone: 212.854.2389 | Fax: 212.854.8248 | Email: univ.seminars@columbia.edu

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Twentieth Century Politics and Society

Meetings

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