Upcoming Events

Forum: The Concept of Capitalism

BRUCE R. SCOTT, the Paul W. Cherington Professor of Business Administration at Harvard, focuses on the impact of public policy on the business environment. He argues that the underlying of much of the economic instability of recent years stems from not understanding capitalism as a three-level system of governance. In 1991, Scott was appointed by the U.S. Senate as one of its four representatives on the U.S. Competitiveness Policy Council. His newest book is The Concept of Capitalism (Springer, 2009). A book signing will follow his Forum.

Forum: Abraham Lincoln: A Life

MICHAEL BURLINGAME, the May Buckley Sadowski Professor of History Emeritus at Connecticut College, is the author of Abraham Lincoln: A Life  (2 vols.; Johns Hopkins, 2008) and The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln (University of Illinois Press, 1994). He has also edited several volumes of Lincoln primary source materials. Burlingame has received the Abraham Lincoln Association Book Prize, and was inducted into the Lincoln Academy of Illinois in 2009.  

Forum: The Death and Life of American Journalism

JOHN NICHOLS and ROBERT W. MCCHESNEY are the founders of Free Press and the authors of Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy (New Press, 2006). Nichols, Washington Correspondent for The Nation, has written “The Beat” blog since 1999. The author of 16 books, McChesney is Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois.

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.

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 C. CHRISTINE FAIR, Assistant Professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies.  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.

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.

Forum: Lincoln

WILLIAM LEE MILLER is Scholar in Ethics and Institutions at the Miller Center. From 1992 until his 1999 retirement, he was Thomas C. Sorensen Professor of Political and Social Thought and Director of the Program in Political and Social Thought at U.Va. A speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson's 1956 presidential campaign and a contributing editor and writer for The Reporter magazine, he was the founding director of the Poynter Center on American Institutions at Indiana University. He is the author of eight books, including Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography (Knopf, 2002).

Forum: Can Our Shameful Prisons be Reformed?

DAVID COLE, Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law School, served as a law clerk to Judge Arlin M. Adams of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Professor Cole was  a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights where he litigated a number of major First Amendment cases, including Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989), United States v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 928 (1990), which established that the First Amendment protects flag burning, and National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, which challenged the constitutionality of content restrictions on federal art funding. He continues to litigate First Amendment and other constitutional issues as a volunteer staff attorney at the Center.

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

MATTHEW SPALDING connects the principles of America's founding with today's thorniest issues as Director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Spalding, a constitutional scholar and authority on American political thought and religious liberty, also serves as project leader of Heritage's First Principles initiative. In his latest book, We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future (ISI Books, 2009), he details America's core principles, shows how they have come under assault by modern progressive-liberalism and lays out a strategy to recover them.  A book signing will follow his Forum.

Forum: What’s New in the Army?

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