George Washington Forum News and Events

Lucas Morel (Washington & Lee University)

Lucas Morel is John K. Boardman, Jr. Professor of Politics at Washington and Lee University, where he has taught since 1999. He earned his PhD in political science from the Claremont Graduate University after doing his undergraduate work at Claremont McKenna College. He is a trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society, former president of the Abraham Lincoln Institute, a consultant on Library of Congress exhibits on Lincoln and the Civil War, was a member of the scholarly board of advisors for the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, and currently serves on the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, which will plan activities to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America. His books include Lincoln’s Sacred Effort: Defining Religion’s Role in American Self-Government (2000) and Lincoln and the American Founding (2020). He has also edited Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope: A Political Companion to “Invisible Man” (2004), Lincoln and Liberty: Wisdom for the Ages (2014) and co-edited The New Territory: Ralph Ellison and the Twenty-First Century (2016).

Plenary speakers: David Bell (Princeton), Janet Polasky (New Hampshire) and Helena Rosenblatt (CUNY-Graduate Center)

Benjamin Constant famously argued that the great achievement of what we now call the Age of Revolution was “representative government” and that “this form of government, the only one in the shelter of which we could find some freedom and peace today, was totally unknown to the free nations of antiquity.” It has been commonplace ever since to claim that many of the fundamental ideas and institutions that we associate with modern representative democracy emerged from the revolutionary upheavals of the later eighteenth century.

This conference and its subsequent volume aim to look afresh at the story of liberal democracy’s origins in the Age of Revolution spanning from the Seven Years’ War to the fall of Napoleon (c. 1760–1815). Did the ideas and institutions of liberal democracy actually emerge during the Age of Revolution? If so, how and why? Were they the product of long-term developments that came to fruition during the revolutionary era? Or were they generated by and amid the conflicts, debates, and upheavals of the period itself? Given that most of the era’s revolutions and uprisings were ultimately either contained or defeated, is it justified to contend that the Age of Revolution witnessed the birth of liberal-democratic ideas and institutions? If not, then what connection is there between the revolutionary turmoil of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the eventual development of liberal democracy in the West and beyond over the next two centuries?

David Bell (Princeton), Janet Polasky (New Hampshire), and Helena Rosenblatt (CUNY-Graduate Center) will deliver plenary lectures.

Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford University Medical School)

Jay Bhattacharya is Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, where he has taught since 2001 and where he earned his MD and PhD in Economics. With Sunetra Gupta (Oxford) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard), he is one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. A research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and at the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute, Bhattacharya holds courtesy appointments as Professor in Economics and in Health Research and Policy. He directs the Stanford Center on the Demography of Health and Aging.  Bhattacharya’s research focuses on the economics of health care around the world with a particular emphasis on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations. His peer-reviewed research has been published in economics, statistics, legal, medical, public health, and health policy journals. He is also on the scientific advisory and editorial boards of Collateral Global.

Josh Rogin (Washington Post)

Josh Rogin is a columnist for the Global Opinions section of the Washington Post and a politcial analyst for CNN. Previously he has covered foreign policy and national security for Bloomberg View, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, Foreign Policy, Congressional Quarterly and Japan’s Asahi Shimbun. He holds a BA in international affairs from the George Washington University and studied at Sophia Univeristy in Tokyo. His latest book is Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century.

Henry R. Nau (George Washington University)

Henry R. Nau is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Emeritus at the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University. From 1989-2016, he directed the US-Japan- South Korea Legislative Exchange Program. Perviously he served as a special assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (1975–1977) and as senior staff member and White House sherpa on President Reagan’s National Security Council responsible for G-7 Summits and international economic affairs (1981–1983). He has written five books, including Conservative Internationalism: Armed Diplomacy Under Jefferson, Polk, Truman and Reagan (2013) and At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy (2002).

This event is co-sponsored by the Alexander Hamilton Society’s Ohio University chapter.