All upcoming News, Politics, & Media programs

The principal architect of the party system and one of the founders of the Democratic Party, Martin Van Buren’s unparalleled skills as a political strategist won him the nickname “The Little Magician"—and a series of increasingly high-profile offices. Van Buren scholar James M. Bradley depicts the struggle for power in the tumultuous decades leading up to the Civil War as he charts the eighth president’s ascent from a tavern in the Hudson Valley to the White House.

Poet William Butler Yeats was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival, the cultural movement that preceded the country’s political independence from Britain. Lucy Collins, editor of the Irish University Review and an associate professor at University College Dublin, explores the cultural politics of early 20th-century Ireland as the crucible within which Yeats’ work was formed and examines how the political and the personal combine in some of his greatest poems.

Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are three influential philosophers whose ideas have significantly shaped political theory and the understanding of the social contract. In a fall series, join Georgetown professor Joseph Hartman as he explores these thinkers who offered distinct perspectives on the nature of human beings, the origins of political authority, and the formation of societies. This session focuses on Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The late 18th century was a period rife with revolutionary fervor and transformative ideas that altered the course of history. The American Declaration of Independence, adopted in 1776, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, ratified in 1789, were radical manifestos that proclaimed new principles of governance and human dignity and challenged centuries-old political and social structures. Historian Alexander Mikaberidze explores these groundbreaking documents and the individuals who dared to imagine a new order that ignited flames of liberty that spread throughout the world.

By the year 2100, the global population is predicted to be 10 billion, 2 billion more than now. Architect Vishaan Chakrabarti sees this as an opportunity to build a more ecologically healthy and equitable world centered on well-designed communities with new forms of affordable, sustainable housing. Drawing from his new book, The Architecture of Urbanity: Designing for Nature, Culture, and Joy, Chakrabarti says that caring for the character and culture of communities can be the key to solving urgent global and political challenges.

Not everyone is aware that the health care system scoops up our most intimate medical secrets to sell commercially to companies that have nothing to do with our treatment or billing. Adam Tanner, author of Our Bodies, Our Data: How Companies Make Billions Selling Our Medical Records, examines how this lucrative international business extends to doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, and insurers—and even labs that test blood and conduct other deeply revealing tests. He offers insights into how we can best balance the promise big data offers to advance medicine and improve lives while preserving the rights and interests of every patient.

For millennia, predicting the future was the province of priests, prophets, astrologers, and seers. Then, in the 20th century, futurologists emerged, arguing that data and design could make such forecasting a certainty. Historian Glenn Adamson offers insight into how the world was transformed by such forecasts of the future—whether in the imagining of new cities, the projection of novel technologies, or the pervasive anticipation of economic and political risks.

From World War II through the Cold War, Winston Churchill and Dwight D. Eisenhower maintained a friendship unlike any other in history, an alliance and camaraderie that defeated Nazism and kept communism at bay. Although occasionally testy, their connection remained close until Churchill’s death. Historian Mitchell Yockelson discusses the personal story of these heads of state and their lasting influence on the world.

As he confronted the most violent and challenging war ever waged on American soil, Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation freeing the 3.5 million enslaved Americans without whom the South could neither feed nor fund their armed insurrection—ultimately dooming the rebellion led by Jefferson Davis. Historian and author Nigel Hamilton discusses how two Americans faced off as the fate of the nation hung in the balance and how Lincoln came to embrace emancipation as the last best chance to save the Union.

Presidential speechwriters provide a unique lens through which to view the nation’s chief executives. Learning about how presidents prepared their speeches and who helped them can reveal much about their views of the job. Author Robert Schlesinger explores the evolving role that presidential speechwriters have played over the last century and by extension how presidents have approached the bully pulpit.