Miller Center of Public Affairs

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

Wed, 09 May 2012 15:00:00 EST

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.

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

Mon, 07 May 2012 15:00:00 EST

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.

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

Fri, 04 May 2012 16:30:00 EST

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, and her articles have appeared in journals such as American Journal of Sociology, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Politics & History, Social Politics, and World Politics. Morgan received an Investigators' Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study Medicare reform, and recently completed, with Andrea Louise Campbell, “The Delegated Welfare State: Medicare, Markets, and the Governance of American Social Policy.” In 2006, she was elected to the National Academy of Social Insurance, and she serves as an associate editor of the journal Social Politics. Morgan was a post-doctoral fellow at NYU's Institute of French Studies (2000-01) and a participant in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Scholars in Health Policy Research program at Yale University (2001-03). In 2008-09, she was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Please RSVP to gage@virginia.edu by Wednesday, May 2.

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

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:00:00 EST

TIMOTHY NAFTALI, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, studies leaders, power, and international affairs. He is the author or co-author of four books, including “‘One Hell of a Gamble’: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958—1964,” “Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism,” and “George H. W. Bush.” 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. Naftali left the library in 2011 to write a study of the Kennedy presidency, scheduled to be published in 2013. Naftali, who has appeared on NPR, MSNBC, FOX News, CNN, the History Channel and C-SPAN, has written for The New York Times, Slate, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Huffington Post.

The Case for Policy-Focused Political Analysis

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:30:00 EST

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.

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

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:00:00 EST

Pakistan and America have been gripped together in a deadly embrace for decades. For half a century American presidents from both parties pursued narrow short-term interests in Pakistan. This myopia actually backfired in the long term, helping to destabilize the political landscape and radicalizing the population, setting the stage for the global jihad we face today. 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.

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

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 16:30:00 EST

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.

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

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:00:00 EST

American constitutional law has undergone a transformation. Issues once left to the people have increasingly become the province of the courts. Subjects as diverse as abortion rights and firearms regulations, health care reform and counterterrorism efforts, not to mention a millennial presidential election, are more and more the domain of judges. What sparked this development? In this engaging volume, 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.

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

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:30:00 EST

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.

Money Matters: Debt Markets and Growth Politics in the Modern United States

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 16:30:00 EST

DAVID FREUND, associate professor in the department of history, University of Maryland, College Park, is the author of “Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America,” which won awards from the Organization of American Historians, the Urban History Association, and the Urban Affairs Association. His current projects include a history of financial markets and free market ideology in the 20th century and “The Modern American Metropolis: A Documentary Reader.” At Maryland he directs the department’s honors program and teaches courses on metropolitan history, state building, and the political economy of capitalism and inequality in the modern United States. Please RSVP to gage@virginia.edu by Wednesday, April 4.