All K–12 teachers can register for free to attend via Zoom any live lecture at the United States Foreign Policy, 1898 to Present seminar. You can find dates, times, and registration links below.
Jeffrey A. Engel, the seminar’s director, is the founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. He has authored or edited thirteen books on American foreign policy, including Fourteen Points for the Twenty-First Century (2020), The Last Card in the Deck: Inside George W. Bush’s Decision to Surge Troops in Iraq (2019), and When the World Seemed New: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War (2017).
Each lecture will be broadcast live from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. Virtual participants will be able to ask questions using the Q&A function. Everyone who registers will be sent a Zoom meeting link and instructions in the confirmation email. Teachers who attend an entire lecture will be sent a PD certificate to verify their attendance.
If you have any questions, please contact education@gilderlehrman.org.
Lecture Schedule
| Session Date and Time | Session Topic |
|---|---|
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August 1, 2023 9:30 a.m.-10:45 a.m. PT |
“War with Spain and Roosevelt’s Corollary” Americans faced new global requirements, and responsibilities, at the start of the twentieth century. Their power had increased, yet their landed frontier had closed. This lecture traces the global roots of the war with Spain in 1898. It will focus on the global thinking behind the Panama Canal, Theodore Roosevelt’s intervention in the Western Hemisphere, and his new doctrine of American leadership. |
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August 1, 2023 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. PT
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“Woodrow Wilson and a World Made Safe for Democracy” With great power comes great responsibility. You need not take Spiderman’s word for it. Woodrow Wilson learned and then preached the same. Unable to avoid direct engagement in World War I, he developed a theory of American leadership in the world that has colored, without exception, every subsequent president and generation of American foreign policy leaders. Following Wilson we do not ask, “Was this president a Wilsonian?” We ask, “How Wilsonian was he?” |
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August 2, 2023 9:30 a.m.-10:45 a.m. PT |
“FDR, the Four Freedoms, and the Arsenal of Democracy” The “Great Debate” of US foreign policy—to engage or to isolate—came to a head by the early 1940s. So too did America’s conviction that the modern (and atomic) world required a new level of US preparatory engagement. Global engagement propelled a new world order based on Washington’s ideals. That is, except for the countries that wouldn’t join in, from which the Cold War emerged. |
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August 2, 2023 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. PT
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“From Potsdam to Perestroika, American Cold War Strategy Phase One: Containment through Detente" Not everyone embraced American sensibilities, nor the US prescription of open markets and democratic elections. Alternative visions, in particular the quite disparate brands of communism espoused by the Soviet Union and then the People’s Republic of China, put some dominions in direct conflict with the expansionist US empire. That is an age-old story: the conflict between empires imbued with different worldviews. What made the Cold War new in global history were the stakes: never before had humans wielded the capacity to destroy all human life. The potential for mass destruction loomed large for policymakers charged with “winning” the Cold War without losing the world. |
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August 3, 2023 9:30 a.m.-10:45 a.m. PT |
“From Potsdam to Perestroika, American Cold War Strategy Phase Two: Watergate to the War on Terror” The Cold War ended. But did anyone “win”? This question reveals much about the inquirer’s worldview and their sense of how the future might unfold. This lecture traces US, Soviet, and Chinese conceptions of the transformative 1980s, recasting the Cold War’s end within the broader trends of globalization, industrialization, and the computer revolution of the last quarter of the twentieth century. If previous generations of Americans wondered if they could avoid the world, the generation that developed the world wide web found it everywhere. |
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August 3, 2023 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. PT |
“Making America Great Again in an Era of Perpetual War” Americans never resolved their central foreign policy question on their own: Should they engage, or lead, commensurate with their global power? The post-9/11 world gave fodder and new life to both sides of the argument, spawning leaders from all parts of the political spectrum—some strange bedfellows indeed—to question anew what America owes to the world and what it owes to itself. |