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Past Event
Seminar

The Buchanan Channel: How the Pro-Apartheid Movement Undercut the Reagan Administration's Anti-Sanctions Effort, 1985–1987

Open to the Public

Speaker: Augusta Dell'Omo, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

This seminar examines how the institutional failure of the Reagan White House to invigorate a sterile sanctions debate created a window of opportunity for pro–South Africa conservatives. Led by White House Director of the Office of Communications Patrick Buchanan, a cadre of pro–South Africa Congressmen, and South Africa's surrogates, the pro-apartheid movement injected a white supremacist dialogue into the White House's discussions on sanctions policy that fundamentally undercut the efforts of the White House to rally a successful veto defense

Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom! Register in advance for this meeting:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYpfuGsqT4jGtfNZ081oEvhhMGJSOugoCMh

Date: Time: - Location: Online
Secretary of State George Schultz testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the Reagan administration's current policies toward South Africa and proposed sanctions against their government, July 23, 1986.

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Speaker: Augusta Dell'Omo, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

By bipartisan margins, Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in September 1986, which President Ronald Reagan promptly vetoed, viewing it as an overreach of the Executive's foreign policy power. Yet Congress overrode Reagan's veto. Not since the War Powers Resolution in 1973 had Congress successfully overridden a President's foreign policy veto. This seminar examines how the institutional failure of the Reagan White House to invigorate a sterile sanctions debate created a window of opportunity for pro–South Africa conservatives. Led by White House Director of the Office of Communications Patrick Buchanan, a cadre of pro–South Africa Congressmen, and South Africa's surrogates, the pro-apartheid movement injected a white supremacist dialogue into the White House's discussions on sanctions policy that fundamentally undercut the efforts of the White House to rally a successful veto defense

Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom! Register in advance for this meeting:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYpfuGsqT4jGtfNZ081oEvhhMGJSOugoCMh

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