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About Dr. Russell Kirk: For more than forty years, Russell Kirk was in the thick of the intellectual controversies of his time. He is the author of some thirty-two books, hundreds of periodical essays, and many short stories. Both Time and Newsweek have described him as one of America’s leading thinkers, and The New York Times acknowledged the scale of his influence when in 1998 it wrote that Kirk’s 1953 book The Conservative Mind “gave American conservatives an identity and a genealogy and catalyzed the postwar movement.” Dr. Kirk wrote and spoke on modern culture, political thought and practice, educational theory, literary criticism, ethical questions, and social themes. He addressed audiences on hundreds of American campuses and appeared often on television and radio.
About the Book: "Putin Watches Russian Economy Collapse along with His Economic Stature,” blared a headline in Time in late 2014. Yet three years have passed since the price of oil crashed in 2014, halving earnings on the product which once funded half of Russia’s government budget. That same year, the West imposed harsh economic sanctions on Russia’s banks, energy firms, and defense sector, cutting off many of Russia’s largest firms from international capital markets and high-tech oil drilling gear. Many analysts—in Russia as well as abroad—thought that economic crisis might threaten Vladimir Putin’s hold on power. It doesn’t look that way now. Today, Russia’s economy has stabilized, inflation is at historic lows, the budget is nearly balanced, and Putin is coasting toward reelection on March 18, giving him a fourth term as president. Putin has recently overtaken Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev as the longest-serving Russian leader since Stalin. How did he do it? This talk will examine Putin's economic policies and how they have supported his domestic and foreign policies. About the Author: Chris Miller is Assistant Professor of International History at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He is also Eurasia Research Director at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia (2018) and The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy (2016). He received his PhD from Yale University and his AB from Harvard University.
About the Lecture: Rarely in history has a political movement and its leaders promised more and produced less than Communism and its dictators from Lenin, Stalin and Mao to Castro, Pol Pot and Kim Jong Un. As chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Dr. Lee Edwards has long studied communism and is considered one of the nation’s leading authorities on the victims and crimes of communism, past and present. About the Speaker: Lee Edwards, distinguished fellow in conservative thought at The Heritage Foundation, is a leading historian of American conservatism and the author or editor of 25 books. Edwards also is adjunct professor of politics at the Catholic University of America and chairman of a foundation that dedicated the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, D.C., in 2007. His books include biographies of Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, Jr. and Edwin Meese III as well as histories of The Heritage Foundation and the American conservative movement. His works have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, French, Hungarian and Swedish. Edwards’ next book, written with Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, is A Brief History of the Cold War, to be published by Regnery in the spring of 2016. Edwards was the founding director of the Institute of Political Journalism at Georgetown University and a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is a past president of the Philadelphia Society and a media fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has appeared frequently on broadcast and cable outlets such as Fox News Channel, CNN, Bloomberg, NBC, PBS, C-SPAN and NPR. His work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, National Review, Human Events, Claremont Review of Books and The American Spectator, among other places. His awards and honors include the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary, the Millennium Star of Lithuania, the Cross of Terra Mariana of Estonia, the Friendship Medal of Diplomacy from the Republic of China (Taiwan), the John Ashbrook Award, the Reed Irvine Media in Accuracy Award, Legend of YAF from Young America’s Foundation, and the Walter Judd Freedom Award. Edwards received a doctorate in world politics from Catholic University as well as a doctor of humane letters degree from Grove City College. He did graduate work at the Sorbonne in Paris. He also holds a bachelor of arts degree in English from Duke University.
About the Lecture: Francis Bacon once opined: "Augustus Caesar would say, that he wondered that Alexander feared he should want work, having no more worlds to conquer: as if it were not as hard a matter to keep as to conquer." Many societies have found that the process of converting military success into a consolidated conquest was harder than they expected. Oddly, historians have not spent that much time on the problem either, preferring to focus more on the battles than the ensuing garrisons. In this sweeping romp through world military history, strategy, and logistics, Dr. Lee explores the "four pillars" of conquest (the titular governor, priest, tax man and garrison) and he then compares how those same pillars worked in non-state societies on the Eurasian steppe and in the Native American woodlands. About the Speaker: Wayne E. Lee is the Dowd Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, where he also chairs the Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense. He is the author of Waging War: Conflict, Culture, and Innovation in World History (2016), Barbarians and Brothers: Anglo-American Warfare, 1500-1865 (2011), and Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina (2001). He has two edited volumes on world military history (both 2011) and many articles and book chapters. He has an additional career as an archaeologist, having done field work in Greece, Albania, Hungary, Croatia, and Virginia, including co-directing two field projects. He was a principal author and a co-editor of Light and Shadow: Isolation and Interaction in the Shala Valley of Northern Albania, winner of the 2014 Society for American Archaeology's book award. In 2015/16 he was the Harold K. Johnson Visiting Professor of Military History at the U.S. Army War College.
About the Lecture: Whether in the military, government or private sector we all admire great leaders and leadership. But what’s the difference between good and great leadership? Based on observation of some of the greatest military leaders of our generation, it's “Teamwork, Tone, Tenacity,” a simple, memorable, actionable framework that can be applied anywhere to improve individual performance and organizational productivity. About the Speaker: RADM Paul Becker, USN (Ret) is known for success leading large, diverse, high-performing organizations in peace, crisis and combat. He is a dynamic public speaker an author who’s articles and interviews have been widely published. Upon his retirement in 2016 the Naval Intelligence Community established the “RADM Paul Becker ‘Teamwork, Tone, Tenacity’ Leadership Award” in his honor.
About the Speaker: Predrag Bošković, MSc, Minister of Defence of Montenegro was born in Pljevlja (Montenegro) on March 12, 1972. He finished primary and secondary school in Podgorica. He graduated from the Faculty of Economics, the University of Montenegro, in 1996. He received his MA in Econometrics and Politics from the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade in 1999. He published numerous research papers and publications and participated in the implementation of major development projects in Montenegro. Boskvic He started his professional career as a Teaching Assistant at the Faculty of Economics in 1996. Throughout his career, he held senior positions, including being a member of the Parliament of Montenegro and serving as the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia and Montenegro, Minister of Economy, Minister of Labour and Social Welfare, Minister of Education in the Government of Montenegro and the President of the Board of Directors of the Coal Mine in Pljevlja. He was part of IVP (international visitor program) in USA in 2003. He has been leading the Women’s Handball Club since 2006. From 2011 to 2016, he was the President of the Board of the Montenegrin Handball Association. During this period, the club and national team he led achieved the best results in the history of Montenegrin handball, including the Olympic silver medal. His commitment and success in this sport have been recognized internationally. He became the Vice President of the European Handball Federation in November 2016.
About the Lecture: In a modern democracy, state and society occupy separate spheres, so that neither the state oppresses society, nor society dispenses with the state and descends into anarchy. The boundary zone between the two is provided by the rule of law. Among the many attributes of Abraham Lincoln as a democratic leader, his respect for the rule of law is the paramount characteristic of his statesmanship. It was a respect which has been seriously questioned, and it was a respect which the pressure of our Civil War’s circumstances gravely challenged. But viewed in proper perspective, no aspect of the Civil war era, or Lincoln’s statecraft, is more remarkable than his maintenance of the rule of law in what would otherwise have been a situation fatal to the American democracy. About the Speaker: Dr. Allen C. Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era, and Director of Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College. He is the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (1999), Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (2004) and Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America (2008). His book on the battle of Gettysburg, Gettysburg: The Last Invasionwas a New York Times best seller in 2013. He is currently serving as the William L. Garwood Visiting Professor in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. His website is www.allenguelzo.com.
The Reporter Who Spilled the Secret behind the U.S. Navy's Victory at Midway by The Institute of World Politics
About the Lecture: This lecture will discuss what moral relativism is and is not, touch briefly on how it became so predominant in the West, and consider its effects. Is there a way out? About the Speaker: Joseph R. Wood is a retired Air Force colonel. He served in the White House as a senior appointee from 2005 until 2008 as Deputy National Security Advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, with responsibility for all policy involving Europe, Eurasia, Africa, and defense issues. His military career included operational and command fighter assignments (A-10 and F-15E) in Asia and Europe; faculty duty in the Department of Political Science at the Air Force Academy where he taught U.S. foreign and defense policy; service at the Pentagon as speech writer for the Chief of Staff and Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force; and temporary assignments in the Joint Staff, the U.S. Mission to the Conventional Forces in Europe Talks in Vienna, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and NATO SHAPE Headquarters in Mons, Belgium. After retiring from the Air Force, he was appointed a member of the career Senior Executive Service at NASA Headquarters. He later worked in the RAND Corporation's Washington office. He was a Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. from 2008 until 2012 and worked at BAE Systems, Inc. from 2011 until 2012. He has taught in a variety of graduate seminars in Europe.
About the Lecture: George Washington was inaugurated as the nation's first president on April 30, 1789, taking the helm of an executive branch with a mandate to execute, and more importantly, define, the nebulous powers of article two of the United States Constitution. What was true of the founding of America as a nation was especially true of the American presidency – George Washington was the “indispensable man.” Washington was the only national figure who was known to his fellow citizens and trusted by them to safely wield the powers the president was granted. Suffice it to say that these powers were unlikely to have been granted without the assumption by the delegates at the Constitutional Convention, and by those who attended the state ratifying conventions, that George Washington would be the first president. Washington understood that the precedents he set would shape the presidency and the nation for as long as the American experiment survived. About the Speaker: Stephen F. Knott is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the United States Naval War College. He served as co-chair of the University of Virginia's Presidential Oral History Program, directed the Ronald Reagan Oral History Project, and also served on the staff of the John F Kennedy Presidential Library. Professor Knott received his PhD in Political Science from Boston College, and has taught at the United States Air Force Academy and the University of Virginia. He is the author of numerous books including Rush to Judgment: George W. Bush, the War on Terror, and His Critics; Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency, an examination of the use of covert operations by early American presidents; and Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth, a book on Alexander Hamilton's controversial image in the American mind. He is a co-author of The Reagan Years and At Reagan’s Side: Insiders’ Recollections from Sacramento to the White House. His most recent co-authored volume is Washington & Hamilton: The Alliance That Forged America.
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