Thursday, January 24, 11:00A.M.

Soldiers in the American Imagination
War! What Is It Good For?
Black Freedom Struggles & the U.S. Military from World War II to Iraq

KIMBERLEY L. PHILLIPS is dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Brooklyn College. Her most recent book, War! What Is It Good For?: Black Freedom Struggles and the U.S. Military from World War II to Iraq, traces African-Americans’ campaign for “the right to fight,” which forced Harry Truman to issue his 1948 executive order for equality in the armed forces. The book examines how blacks’ participation in wars after Truman’s order and their struggles for equal citizenship galvanized an antiwar activism that reshaped their struggles for freedom. Phillips considers how federal policies that desegregated the military also maintained racial, gender, and economic inequalities.

Monday, February 25, 6:00 P.M.

Panel Discussion
Restraining the Toll of War and Violence

This Forum brings together expertise in international law, humanitarian relief, diplomacy, and military doctrine to explore the efficacy of postwar tribunals and other international efforts to repair and reconstruct societies in the aftermath of civil wars and mass violence.

AMBASSADOR DAVID SCHEFFER serves as director of the Center for International Human Rights at the Northwestern School of Law. The U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Expert on U.N. Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials, Foreign Policy named him one of the “Top Global Thinkers of 2011.” Scheffer’s new book, All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals, recounts his own experience working under former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to create criminal tribunals, which resulted in the permanent International Criminal Court.

ANDREW GILBERT is assistant professor of anthropology at McMaster University, whose research focuses on the politics of social transformation, international intervention, and the relationship between violence, historical narrative, nationalist mobilization, and state building. Gilbert has been the recipient of an H. F. Guggenheim Foundation research grant.

SEVERINE AUTESSERE is assistant professor of political science at Barnard College. Her recent book, The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peace Building, suggests a new explanation for international peace-building failures in civil wars. The book develops a case study of the international intervention during the Congo’s unsuccessful transition from war to democracy. Autessere has been awarded two H. F. Guggenheim Foundation research grants.

GEOFFREY S. CORN is professor of law at South Texas College of Law where he teaches national security law, the law of armed conflict, comparative terrorism law, and international law. Corn spent 22 years as an Army officer and served as the Army’s senior law of war expert in the Office of the Judge Advocate General and Chief of the Law of War Branch in the International Law Division.

Monday, March 4, 11:00 A.M.

Sources of Terror
Friction
How Radicalization Happens to Them and Us

CLARK MCCAULEY is professor of sciences and mathematics and co-director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at Bryn Mawr College. His research interests include the psychology of group identification, group dynamics and intergroup conflict, and the psychological foundations of ethnic conflict and genocide. McCauley is co-author of the recent book, Friction: How Radicalization Happens to Them and Us, which examines how radicalization can lead to political violence in individuals and groups.

Monday, March 18, 11:00 A.M.

Origins of the Era of Unconventional War
Embers of War
The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam

FREDRIK LOGEVALL is professor of history at Cornell University and director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. He teaches courses on the history of U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy and the international history of the Cold War and the Vietnam Wars. In his new book, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, Logevall traces the path that led France and the United States to lose their way during the Vietnam War.

Monday, April 15, 11:00 A.M.

The American Impulse Toward Terror
Klansville, USA
The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan

DAVID CUNNINGHAM is associate professor and chair of sociology at Brandeis University’s Social Justice & Social Policy Program. Cunningham has worked with the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Mississippi Truth Project. His current research focuses on the causes, consequences, and legacy of racial violence. Cunningham’s most recent book, Klansville, U.S.A.: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan, is the first substantial history of the civil rights-era Ku Klux Klan’s rise and fall.

Monday, April 29, 11:00 A.M.

Drawing the Boundaries of American Warfare
Lincoln’s Code
The Laws of War in American History

JOHN FABIAN WITT is professor of law at Yale Law School and author of Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History; Patriots and Cosmopolitans: Hidden Histories of American Law; and the prize-winning book, The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law. In 2010, Witt was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Before returning to Yale, he taught legal history at Columbia and served as law clerk to Judge Pierre N. Leval on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.