Forum: The Long Battle Ahead: The 2012 Presidential Election and How The Washington Post Will Cover It

MARCUS BRAUCHLI, Washington Post executive editor, oversees print and digital news operations. Previously, he had served as managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, overseeing its print and online news operations, both in the U.S. and internationally. CHRIS CILLIZZA writes “The Fix,” a politics blog for The Washington Post. He also covers the White House for the newspaper and web site. Cillizza has appeared as a guest on NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, and CNN.

Forum: Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden--from 9/11 to Abbottabad

It was only a week before 9/11 that PETER BERGEN turned in the manuscript of “Holy War, Inc.,” the story of Osama bin Laden (whom Bergen had once interviewed in a mud hut in Afghanistan) and his declaration of war on America.The book became a New York Times bestseller and the essential portrait of the most formidable terrorist enterprise of our time. In “Manhunt,” Bergen picks up the thread with this taut yet panoramic account of the pursuit and killing of bin Laden. A book signing will follow his Forum.

Forum: What the American Public Thinks About the Obama Administration's Push for Evidence-Based Medicine

THE PEYTON AND JANET WEARY FORUM ON HEALTH CARE

ERIC M. PATASHNIK is a politics and public policy professor at the University of Virginia.  His research examines American national policymaking, health care, budgeting, and entitlement programs.

Colloquium: Delegated Powers: The Mix of Public and Private Authority in American Social Policy

KIMBERLY J. MORGAN is associate professor of political science and international affairs at The George Washington University. Her research focuses on the politics of social policy in the United States and Western Europe, with particular interests in family policies, health care, and taxation. Morgan's book, “Working Mothers and the Welfare State: Religion and the Politics of Work-Family Policy in Western Europe and the United States,” was published in 2006 by Stanford University Press.  Please RSVP to gage@virginia.edu by Wednesday, May 2.

Forum: Watergate in Nixonland: The Challenge of Presenting Public History in a Presidential Library

TIMOTHY NAFTALI, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, studies leaders, power, and international affairs. From 1998 to 2006, Naftali led the Presidential Recordings Program at the Miller Center. During this period, he also served as a consultant to the Nazi War Crimes Interagency Working Group and the 9/11 Commission. Joining the National Archives in 2006, he became the first director of the federal Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.

Colloquium: The Case for Policy-Focused Political Analysis

PAUL PIERSON is the John Gross Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. His most recent book is “Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class,” co-authored by Jacob Hacker. Pierson is an active commentator on public affairs, whose writings have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and The New Republic. 

Pierson’s “Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment,” won the American Political Science Association's 1995 prize for the best book on American national politics. His article “Path Dependence, Increasing Returns and the Study of Politics” won the APSA’s prize for the best article in the American Political Science Review in 2000, as well as the Aaron Wildavsky Prize for its enduring contribution to the field of public policy, awarded by the Public Policy Section of the APSA in 2011. He has served on the editorial boards of The American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, and The Annual Review of Political Science. 

Please RSVP to gage@virginia.edu by Wednesday, April 25.

Forum: Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of the Global Jihad

BRUCE RIEDEL, one of America's foremost authorities on U.S. security and South Asia, sketches the history of U.S.-Pakistani relations from the partitioning of the subcontinent in 1947 up through the present day. It is muddled story, meandering through periods of friendship and enmity. Riedel deftly interprets the tortuous path of relations between two very different nations that remain, in many ways, stuck with each other.  A book signing will follow his Forum.

Colloquium: The Global Diffusion of Law: Transnational Crime and the Case of Human Trafficking

Please note that this colloquium will take place on a Monday.

BETH SIMMONS is Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University. Her book, “Who Adjusts? Domestic Sources of Foreign Economic Policy During the Interwar Years, 1924-1939,” was recognized by the American Political Science Association in 1995 as the best book published in 1994 in government, politics, or international relations. Her recent book, “Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics,” received the APSA’s Woodrow Wilson Award, the International Social Science Council’s Stein Rokkan Prize, the American Society for International Law’s Certificate of Merit for a Preeminent Contribution to Creative Scholarship, and the International Studies Association’s Best Book Award.

Simmons was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009, was recently a fellow at the Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice at New York University, and is the current president of the International Studies Association.

Please RSVP to gage@virginia.edu by Thursday, April 12.

Forum: Cosmic Constitutional Theory: Why Americans Are Losing Their Inalienable Right to Self-Governance

Judge J. HARVIE WILKINSON argues that America's most brilliant legal minds have launched a set of cosmic constitutional theories that, for all their value, are undermining self-governance.  Judge Wilkinson calls for a plainer, simpler, self-disciplined commitment to judicial restraint and democratic governance.  A book signing will follow his Forum.

Colloquium: 'Generation Gap’ to ‘Just Say No’: Suburban Politics and the War on Drugs from the 1960s - 1980s

MATTHEW D. LASSITER is associate professor of history and associate professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan. He is the author of “The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South,” winner of the 2007 Lillian Smith Award presented by the Southern Regional Council. His article for the Journal of Urban History, “The Suburban Origins of ‘Color-Blind’ Conservatism: Middle-Class Consciousness in the Charlotte Busing Crisis,” was republished in “The Best American History Essays 2006.” He is also co-editor of “The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism” and “The Moderates’ Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation in Virginia.” His current book project is “The Suburban Crisis: The Pursuit and Defense of the American Dream.”

Please RSVP to gage@virginia.edu by Wednesday, April 11.