Recent Events

Forum: Crisis and Command: Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush

JOHN YOO, who authored the infamous “torture memos” while serving in the George W. Bush administration’s Justice Department, argues in Crisis and Command  (Kaplan Publishing, 2010) that presidents gain power at the expense of Congress during national security crises. Yoo, who teaches law at the University of California at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall Law School, has written two previous books dealing with war and presidential power. A book signing will follow his Forum.

Forum: Street Gang: A Complete History of Sesame Street

Virginia Festival of the Book Event  Before MICHAEL DAVIS wrote the New York Times bestseller Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street (Penguin, 2009), he was a senior editor at TV Guide, and worked at both the Baltimore Sun and the Chicago Sun-Times.  Prior to this Forum, David Mullins, President and General Manager of WVPT-PBS and George H. Gilliam, Chair of the Miller Center Forum, will judge a contest of Sesame Street character drawings and costumes submitted by students in the Central Virginia area. Following the Forum, meet the local artists and have Davis sign your copy of his book, which will be on sale at the Miller Center.

Forum: Evolution of the War in Iraq and Prospects for the Future

BRIGADIER GENERAL HERBERT R. MCMASTER is Chief of Concept Development and Experimentation at the U. S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command at Ft. Monroe. He has spoken and written on the reliance of the war effort on technology, including a piece in War Affairs Journal, “The Human Element: When Gadgetry Becomes Strategy.” This Forum is part of a series on the state of the military

Forum: We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future

MATTHEW SPALDING is Director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation. An expert on political history and constitutionalism, he is co-author of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2005), a clause-by-clause look at that foundational document by 109 legal specialists.  Spalding appears frequently on The Glenn Beck Program. A book signing will follow his Forum.

Forum: The New Population Bomb: The Four Megatrends That Will Change the World

JACK A. GOLDSTONE, Professor of Public Policy at George Mason, warns that by 2050, the relative demographic weight of the world’s developed countries will drop nearly 25 percent, their labor forces will substantially age and decline, and most of the world’s expected population growth will be concentrated in today’s poorest, youngest, and predominantly Muslim countries. How must the world’s basic global-governance structures be changed to deal with these conditions?

Forum: Can Our Shameful Prisons be Reformed?

Georgetown University Law School Professor DAVID COLE writes, “With approximately 2.3 million people in prison or jail, the United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. …We have a 40-percent lead on our closest competitors, Russia and Belarus.”  Most U.S. prisoners are black, poor, uneducated, and not a cause for concern for most Americans. What can Americans do to reform their corrections system? More information can found be at www.nybooks.com/articles/23382.

Forum: From Lincoln to Obama

Americans inaugurated Barack Obama as president just weeks before celebrating the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. WILLIAM LEE MILLER, Scholar in Ethics and Institutions at the Miller Center and author of Lincoln’s Virtue’s: An Ethical Biography (Vintage, 2003), considers whether Obama is an heir to Lincoln’s legacies.  Archived videos of other recent Miller Center talks by Miller are available at www.millercenter.org.

Colloquium: Drowning in the Bathtub: The American Anti-Tax Movement and its Effect on State Cigarette Taxes

Former Miller Center Fellow NICOLE KAZEE has a joint appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of American politics and policymaking. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University. She has also received fellowships from PEO International, Demos and the Brookings Institution. Her dissertation,"Wal-Mart Welfare: Business, Fiscal Regime, and the Politics of State Health Policymaking" highlighted the importance of institutional rules, fiscal norms, and the political role of employers.

Panel: Diplomacy against Terror: America's Allies and Enemies in Pakistan

The 2010 Ambassador William C. Battle Symposium on American Diplomacy

This special panel will feature HASSAN ABBAS, Quaid-i-Azam Chair Professor at Columbia University and former Pakistani government official, and LISA CURTIS, Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.  Moderated by GAGE Faculty Associate JEFFREY LEGRO, with comments from Professor JOHN ECHEVERRI-GENT, this symposium will examine the nature of the terrorist threat based in Pakistan and assess U.S. counter-terrorism policy in the region.

This symposium is part of a two day event examining various aspects of politics in Pakistan and US-Pakistan relations, organized by John Echeverri-Gent of the Politics Department and the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Virginia.  Please see the conference website for the full schedule of events.

Please note, this panel will take place at the Harrison Institute Auditorium on grounds.

Forum: Current Debates in Higher Education

Do we have enough college graduates to remain a world class economic power? Is the college business model broken?  DAVID W. BRENEMAN, a University Professor and the Newton & Rita Meyers Professor in the Economics of Education, served as Dean of the Curry School of Education from 1995 to 2007, and as Director of the Public Policy Program at the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. He analyses questions that will be the subject of two Miller Center National Discussion and Debate Series events during the spring of 2010.