Rothermere American Institute: Recent Episodes
Oxford University
This presentation and discussion, features Gary Younge (University of Manchester) Alan Curtis (Eisenhower Foundation) on the legacies and lessons of the Kerner Commission and their relevance to the current American moment. Alan Curtis, President, Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation
Gary Younge, Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester
Chair: Mitch Robertson, Politics Graduate Scholar, Rothermere American Institute.
In 1968, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, commonly known as the Kerner Commission, concluded that America was heading towards “two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal”. Today, America’s communities are experiencing increasing racial tensions and inequality, working-class resentment over the unfulfilled American Dream, white supremacist violence, toxic inaction in Washington, and the decline of the nation’s global example.
This presentation and discussion with Alan Curtis and Gary Younge was hosted by Mitch Robertson and the Rothermere American Institute on 16 June 2020. Alan Curtis is President of the Eisenhower Foundation and recently co-edited Healing Our Divided Society with Senator Fred Harris, the last surviving member of the Kerner Commission. The book reflects on America’s urban climate today and sets forth evidence-based policies concerning employment, education, housing, neighbourhood development, and criminal justice based on what has been proven to work – and not work. Gary Younge is an award-winning author, broadcaster, and academic. He writes for The Guardian and the Financial Times.
New Yorker fiction through the decades Deborah Treisman has been fiction editor at The New Yorker since 2003, having joined the magazine in 1998. She hosts the award-winning New Yorker Fiction Podcast. She has edited the anthology 20 Under 40: Stories from The New Yorker (2010) and most recently (with Anne Doran), Walter Hopps’s The Dream Colony: A Life in Art (2017). Published since 1925, The New Yorker features journalism, commentary, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It has a wide audience beyond New York and is well known for its illustrated and often topical covers, its commentaries on popular culture and eccentric Americana, and its attention to modern fiction. It is published weekly for most of the year, with some issues covering a fortnight. The annual Esmond Harmsworth Lecture in American Arts and Letters is the centrepiece of the Oxford’s American literary calendar. Made possible by the generosity of Esmond V. Harmsworth, the lecture has been given by some of America’s leading novelists, poets, playwrights, and literary critics.
Health and disease history of the Caribbean, 1491-1850: two syndemics John R. McNeill is widely considered a pioneer in the study of environmental history. His books include The Mountains of the Mediterranean World: An Environmental History (1992), Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-century World (2000), Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1640-1914 (2010), and most recently (with Peter Engelke), The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945 (2016). He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and President of the American Historical Association for 2019.
Making Oscar Wilde reveals the untold story of young Oscar’s career in Victorian England and post-Civil War America. Set on two continents, it tracks a larger-than-life hero on an unforgettable adventure to make his name and gain international acclaim. With superb style and an instinct for story-telling, Mendelssohn brings to life the charming young Irishman who set out to captivate the United States and Britain with his words and ended up conquering the world. In conversation with panelists Natalia Cecire (Sussex), Elizabeth Kiss (Warden of Rhodes House), Sage Goodwin (D.Phil. candidate in History, University College), and William Mouelle Makolle (Visiting Ph.D. candidate in History, Sorbonne)
The 2015 Winant Lecture in American Government. Byron Shafer is Hawkins Chair of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The 2018 Winant Lecture in American Government. David Sehat is a cultural and intellectual historian of the United States. He writes broadly on American intellectual, political, and cultural life. He is the author of The Jefferson Rule: How the Founding Fathers Became Infallible and Our Politics Inflexible (Simon and Schuster, 2015) and The Myth of American Religious Freedom (Oxford, 2011; updated edn. 2015), which won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians.
Deborah Treisman, Fiction Editor of The New Yorker, discusses the life and work of American museum director and curator of modern art, Walter Hopps, with visiting professor of American Art, Miguel De Baca
The Rothermere American Institute’s annual Ambassador John J. Louis Jr. Lecture in Anglo-American Relations given by The Hon. Jamie Rubin, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State.
Professor Christopher Capozzola specializes in the political and cultural history of the United States from the late nineteenth century to the present. His research interests are in the history of war, politics, and citizenship in modern American history.
A public lecture by Professor David Lubin (Wake Forest University) as part of a series on the history of the United States and World War One.
Robert Schmuhl (Notre Dame) gives a talk on the Easter Rising as part of the American History Research Seminar series.
Sir Hew Strachan delivers the first Rothermere American Institute Lecture at the annual Chalke Valley History Festival on 29 June 2016.
Mr Price, who joined the staff of the Nixon administration in 1969, working in the Urban Affairs Council, discusses the relationship between Moynihan and Nixon during the Nixon presidency.
Robert Scott (President Emeritus, Adelphi University, and RAI), gives a talk for the Rothermere American Institute on the state of American higher education.
The Chancellor of Oxford University, Lord Patten of Barnes, CH, delivers the RAI’s inaugural Ambassador John J. Louis Jr. Lecture in Anglo-American Relations
Christopher P. ‘Kip’ Hall (DLA Piper and University of Connecticut) gives a talk on Fraud in American Capital markets. Part of the American Business: Past, Present and Future series.
The Hon. Christopher Bancroft Burnham, Former US Under Secretary of State and former Under Secretary General of the United Nations, gives a talk for the Rothermere American Institute seminar series
Philip K. Howard (Common Good legal reform coalition) gives a talk for the Rothermere American Institute
The Sir John Elliott Lecture in Atlantic History 2014 by Professor David Armitage. David Armitage is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at Harvard, where he teaches intellectual and international history. Born in Britain and educated at Cambridge and Princeton, he taught at Columbia University for 11 years before moving to Harvard in 2004. He has pursued the concept and themes of Atlantic history as co-editor and contributor to volumes on The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800 (2nd edn., 2009), The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760-1840 (2010), and Pacific Histories: Ocean, Land, and People (2014).
Michael Aronstein, President, Portfolio Manager and Chief Investment Officer of Marketfield Asset Management (New York) delivers a lecture in the Institute’s ‘American Business: Past, Present and Future’ series. Michael Aronstein began his investment career in 1979 at Merrill Lynch, eventually becoming Senior Market Analyst, Senior Investment Strategist, and Manager of Global Investment Strategy. His written work has been cited by Institutional Investor as the most valuable strategic research on Wall Street. A graduate of Yale College, he co-founded Comstock Partners in 1986, later serving as its President for six years, and joined Oscar Gruss & Son Incorporated as Chief Investment Strategist in 2004.
Writer Claire Messud gives the Esmond Harmsworth Lecture in American Arts and Letters 2014
Chairman and Founder of the Bridgespan Group Thomas J. Tierney gives a talk for the Rothermere American Institute on philanthropy and how many Americans are giving back to society
Please note. The final 10 minutes to this podcast are Audio Only. We apologise for the inconvenience. Forty years after President Richard Nixon resigned from office following the Watergate scandal, Alexander Butterfield, Deputy Assistant to President Nixon, and John Price, Special Assistant to President Nixon for Urban Affairs, will discuss their experiences of working for the enigmatic and controversial 37th President of the United States at a special seminar at the RAI on Wednesday 12 March at 5pm.
Godfrey Hodgson and Randall Woods discuss President Kennedy's life in a special event marking the anniversary of his assassination on November 22, 1963. On Friday 22 November – fifty years to the day since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated – the RAI marks the occasion with a very special event. Godfrey Hodgson, Distinguished Fellow of the RAI and former Washington correspondent of The Sunday Times and The Observer, and Professor Randall Woods, University of Arkansas and John G. Winant Visiting Professor of American Government, 2013-14, discuss President Kennedy’s life and legacy.
David Roll's portrait of Hopkins discusses his early life and career, but emphasizes his role alongside FDR (and later Truman) in World War II, making use of previously private diaries and letters.
The annual Esmond Harmsworth Lecture in American Arts and Letters, given in May 2013 by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Auburn.
In this lecture, Professor Barry Supple (FBA) and Professor Avner Offer (FBA) will analyse the post-war economic development of the United States. In late 1777, Adam Smith received news of General Burgoyne's defeat at Saratoga, promising calamity for Britain's war effort in America. His correspondent expressed deep concern that the nation was ruined. "There is a great deal of ruin in a nation", was the great economist's calm reply. In this lecture and discussion, Professors Supple and Offer, two of Britain's most distinguished economic historians, will use Smith's sanguine assessment as a starting point for an analysis of the post-war economic development of the United States. Professor Barry Supple, CBE, FBA, is Emeritus Professor of Economic History at Cambridge. Professor Avner Offer, FBA, is the former Chichele Professor of Economic History at Oxford.
The Annual Esmond Harmsworth Lecture in American Arts and Letters, given by award-winning Filipina American screenwriter and novelist, Sabina Murray at the Rothermere American Institute on 13th June 2012.
The Annual Esmond Harmsworth Lecture in American Arts and Letters, given by Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner C.K. Williams on 'A Life in Poems' at the Rothermere American Institute on 24th May 2010. C.K. Williams reads some of his poems about his life from childhood to recent years, and what inspired them.
Fred L. Greenstein (Professor of Politics Emeritus, Princeton University) delivers the 2010 John Lees Memorial Lecture at the American Politics Group conference.
Robin Kelley's inaugral lecture comments on the absence of discussion about race as connected to Barak Obama's presidency, particularly in light of American history and politics.
The 2009 Esmond Harmsworth Lecture in American Arts and Letters, given on 21 May 2009 at the Rothermere American Institute, by Professor Christopher Bigsby, University of East Anglia.