Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

Imperial & Global Forum readers on the U.S. West Coast and Pacific North West might be interested in the following upcoming conference that I am very much looking forward to – the “Ideologies and U.S. Foreign Policy” International History Conference.

Co-organized by Christopher McKnight Nichols, Danielle Holtz, and David Milne, the conference  at Oregon State University as a project is intended to bring international scholars together to investigate the profound ideas that have led to the production of U.S. foreign policies. The co-organizers are motivated by the notion that contemporary ideas about the sources and mechanisms of power need to be reconsidered with the lessons of history in mind, particularly regarding the relationship between domestic and international policy.

The events related to the conference are free and open to the public (with on-site registration) and will include public forums, scholarly panels, and a keynote address by James Lindsay (Council on Foreign Affairs), all confronting crucial issues in U.S. foreign policy, in both historical and contemporary contexts. Contributors from around the world, representing a diversity of approaches to the study of foreign policy, will explore the central ideas and ideologies as well as people and groups that have shaped U.S. involvement with the world. Panelists will engage with large public audiences in Corvallis and Portland over the course of several days. C-SPAN and History News Network also are expected to be covering the conference.

The program is as follows:

CONFERENCE PROGRAM: IDEOLOGIES AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

FRIDAY, MAY 31

9:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. – Coffee and snacks, Anteroom, Memorial Union, Journey Room

9:30 a.m. – 9:55 a.m. – Opening Remarks

Christopher McKnight Nichols, Danielle Holtz, David Milne, conference organizers
Memorial Union, Journey Room

10:00 am – 12:00 pm – Panel I: Concepts of the Subject-State

Matthew Kruer, Assistant Professor of Early North American History and the College, University of Chicago, “Indian Subjecthood and White Populism in British America.”

Benjamin Coates, Associate Professor, Department of History, Wake Forest University, “Civilization as Ideology.”

Mark Bradley, Bernadotte E. Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor of International History and the College, University of Chicago, “The United States and the Idea of the Global South.”

Melani McAlister, Professor of American Studies and International Affairs, Department of American Studies, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, George Washington University, “Not Just Churches”: American Jews, Joint Church Aid, and the Nigeria-Biafra War”

Moderated by Christopher McKnight Nichols, Oregon State University
Memorial Union, Journey Room

12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. – Lunch Break (Private lunch for conference panelists)

1:00 p.m – 3:00 p.m. – Panel II: Concepts of Power

Marc-William Palen, Senior Lecturer, History Department, University of Exeter, “Competing Free Trade Traditions in U.S. Foreign Policy from the American Revolution to the “American Century’.”

Nicholas Guyatt, Reader in North American History, Fellow of Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge, “‘The righteous cause’: American understandings of empire and international order, c. 1830 – 1860.”

Matt Karp, Associate Professor of History, Princeton University, “Antislavery and Empire: The Early Republican Party Confronts the World.”

Adriane Lentz-Smith, Associate Professor of History, Duke University, “National Security Begins at Home:” Racial Borders, Surveillance, and the Ideology of Protection.”

Danielle Holtz, Postdoctoral Fellow, Oregon State University,

Moderated by Danielle Holtz, Oregon State University
Memorial Union, Journey Room

3:00 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. – Coffee break, Anteroom, Memorial Union, Journey Room

3:15 p.m. – 5:15 p.m. – Panel III: Concepts of the International

Raymond Haberski Jr., Professor of American Studies and Professor of History, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis, “Catholic Minds and American Wars: Just War Theory from the ‘Challenge of Peace’ to Drone Warfare.”

Imaobong Umoren, Assistant Professor in International History, London School of Economics and Political Science, “Eslanda Robeson, Global Freedom Struggles and U.S. Foreign Policy.”

Andrew Preston, Professor in American History and Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge, “Insecurity and U.S. Foreign Policy.”

Emily Conroy-Krutz, Associate Professor of History, Michigan State University, “For Young People”: Protestant Missions, Geography, and American Youth at the End of the 19th Century”

Christopher McKnight Nichols, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for Humanities, Oregon State University, “Unilateralism as Ideology.”

Moderated by David Milne, University of East Anglia
Memorial Union, Journey Room

5:15 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. – Dinner Break (Private dinner for conference panelists)

7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. – Keynote Address – The Oregon State University 2018-2019 Governor Tom McCall Lecture “Donald Trump and Ideology”

Presented by James Lindsay, Council on Foreign Relations
LaSells Stewart Center, C&E Auditorium

(Book signing to follow the keynote talk)

SATURDAY, JUNE 1

9:00 a.m – 9:55 a.m. – Coffee and Snacks Anteroom, Memorial Union, Journey Room

10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Panel IV: Concepts of Democracy

Michaela Hoenicke-Moore, Associate Professor of History, University of Iowa, “’Jesus Was A Rabble-Rousing Socialist:’ U.S. Foreign Policy Ideas and Ideologies at the Grassroots Level, 1938-1968.”

Jeremi Suri, Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs; Professor of Public Affairs and History, University of Texas at Austin, “Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy.”

Penny Von Eschen, Professor of History and William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of American Studies, University of Virginia, “Roads Not Taken: the Delhi Declaration, Nelson Mandela, Václav Havel and Alternative Visions of a 1989 Global Order.”

Daniel Tichenor, Philip H. Knight Professor of Social Science, Senior Faculty Fellow at the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, University of Oregon, “Contentious Designs: Conceiving U.S. Immigration and Refugee Policy.”

Moderated by Mark Bradley, Bernadotte E. Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor of International History and the College, University of Chicago,
Memorial Union, Journey Room

12:00 p.m – 1:00 p.m. – Lunch Break (Private lunch for conference panelists)

1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. – Panel V: Concepts of Progress

Jay Sexton, Professor and Kinder Endowed Chair in Constitutional Democracy, University of Missouri, “Capital and Immigration in the Era of the Civil War.”

Audra Wolfe, Independent Historian, Founder of Outside Reader, “Dual-Use Ideologies: The Role of Science in Cold War Cultural Diplomacy.”

Daniel Bessner, Associate Professor in American Foreign Policy, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, “The Pre-History of the ‘Blob’.”

Daniel Immerwahr, Associate Professor, History Department, Northwestern University, “Ten-Cent Ideology: Donald Duck Comics and U.S. Hegemony.”

Moderated by Melani McAlister, Professor of American Studies and International Affairs, George Washington University
Memorial Union, Journey Room

3:00 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. – Coffee Break, Anteroom, Memorial Union, Journey Room

3:15 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. – Concluding Thoughts, Overall Themes, Memorial Union, Journey Room

Major support for this conference comes from The Richard Lounsbery Foundation, the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, Patrick and Vicki Stone, the Oregon State University Center for the Humanities, and the OSU School of History, Philosophy, and Religion.