Applied History Project

Speaker: Michael Falcone, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

This presentation will examine how today's model of superpowers as science-powers stemmed from highly contingent historical processes — a whole paradigm of global competition that emerged from a specific set of transatlantic personal networks and rivalries in the 1940s. It will also explore how the United States built its high-tech identity by siphoning other countries' intellectual property and state-science models, much as it charges China with doing today. Finally, it will deconstruct what scholars and policymakers alike really refer to when use the fuzzy concepts of nations being "ahead" or "behind" their technological rivals.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMpdOisqT4iGNB1X9jxHKY-xh-B5Vc-QmgP

Note New Date

Speaker: Katrina Ponti, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

As the United States emerged as an independent state after the Revolution, it faced the world with a State Department staffed by five clerks and initially led by an absentee Thomas Jefferson. How did the nation secure its place in global affairs with such a small bureaucracy? What was the diplomacy of a democracy supposed to look like?

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJErdeyrqzsuHd0PyAHYv3lQQoGGLh7Lm4P-

Speaker: Grant Golub, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

This presentation traces how the War Department shifted from the fringes to the center of U.S. government power during World War II and examines how it sought to influence U.S. politics and grand strategy through its attempts to gain leverage over its bureaucratic rivals and compete to achieve its preferred policy outcomes.  

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0pd--pqjoiGdLIB9nJtv_yO1BPePsSoZJN

Speaker: Andrew Porwancher, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

As Theodore Roosevelt launched his re-election bid for the White House, Russian-American relations took center stage. Russia was then denying visas to U.S. passport–holders of Jewish faith, and the "Passport Question" became a critical issue for Jewish voters. This seminar will explore Roosevelt's strategic, and often secretive, campaign to leverage diplomacy at the ballot box.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0qfu6trToiHtFzUuzqYHFQjRDWxl98jzMg 

Speaker: Ashley Serpa, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

In this seminar, the speaker will discuss the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA)’s history, from its inception as a tool to combat Nazi propaganda in the WWII-era to its use against suspected communists in the early Cold War. She will also discuss the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's investigation on foreign agents in the 1960s, which inspired the last successful FARA amendment, to help scholars and policymakers understand why so many proposed amendments failed and FARA proved ineffective in the decades following.

Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom! Please register before the event:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAvdumhrDoqEtIim84pzzBIbyZEKNCAMp42

Speaker: Jayita Sarkar, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

How do the exports of U.S. power reactors relate to nonproliferation, global capitalism, and U.S. empire? And what does that tell us about the dominance by design of U.S. government and businesses in the decolonized world, where they promised development but delivered debt? This seminar pursues this inquiry through investigating the role of the light water reactor as an instrument of U.S. nonproliferation policy from the mid-1950s until the end of the 1980s.

Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom! Register before the seminar here:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMscOyspz0uHdDEEReU3VaamAmpD7qRPMrO

Speaker: Andrew Porwancher, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

During Theodore Roosevelt's presidency, Jews in the Russian Empire were subjected to brutal pogroms that claimed thousands of lives. Americans rallied behind the embattled Jewish community and pressed Roosevelt to take action on the global stage. Russia, in turn, fed lies to the press in the United States in a bid to manipulate the public and the president. This seminar explores this little-known episode in U.S. history and considers its implications for Russian-American relations today.

Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom! Register before the seminar here:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMkceigqzkqG9A2-Hs9abdZvs09WSov1leh C

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

Speaker: Peter Slezkine, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

By the end of the Second World War, most American policymakers assumed that their country had become inescapably and durably entangled in the affairs of the globe. Half a decade later, they settled on an objective that would determine the direction of their country's international efforts going forward. Throughout the 1950s, as the United States established itself as a permanent player on the global stage, American policymakers pursued the overarching aim of "free world leadership." This seminar will trace the emergence and evolution of the concept of the "free world" in American history, demonstrate its impact on policymakers' understanding of the Cold War and the United States' global role, and investigate the shift to alternative perspectives (including one centered on the "third world") by the end of the 1960s. Finally, the seminar will address how the current U.S. global order has been durably shaped by its original focus on the "free world."

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.

Speaker: Aroop Mukharji, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

President William McKinley's foreign policy ranks among the most consequential of all U.S. presidents. At the start of his first term, the United States was primarily hemispheric in its foreign policy orientation. By the start of his second term, the United States had brought down a European colonial power, had begun governing seven new overseas territories, and had fought two additional wars in Asia.

This presentation focuses specifically on the Spanish-American War and why McKinley decided to intervene. Three myths about his motivations continue to persist: (1) that the United States waged an economically imperialist war to open up trade opportunities, (2) that the rhetoric of manliness pressured McKinley into taking a more aggressive stance, and (3) that the yellow press whipped up a public frenzy that led to the declaration of war. These influences are greatly overstated. Instead, this presentation will argue that the Spanish-American War was partly a humanitarian war, but also a "precautionary war" (author's term) that was based on a general fear of disorder, uncertainty, and instability and waged to ensure conditions that better facilitated regional stability and peace.

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.