George Washington Forum News and Events

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.

Eric Nelson (Harvard University)

Eric Nelson is the Robert M. Beren Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he was an undergraduate before earning his PhD at the University of Cambridge. His books include The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding (2014); The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (2010); and The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought ( 2004). He also edited Hobbes’s translations of the Iliad and Odyssey for the Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes (2008). His most recent book is The Theology of Liberalism: Political Philosophy and the Justice of God (2019).

Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn (Syracuse University)

Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn is a Professor of History at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and a Senior Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. Her books include Black Neighbors: Race and the Limits of Reform in the American Settlement House Movement, 1890-1945 (1993)—which won the Berkshire Prize—and Race Experts: How Racial Etiquette, Sensitivity Training and New Age Therapy Hijacked the Civil Rights Revolution (2001), as well as three edited volumes. Lasch-Quinn’s writing has also appeared widely in both scholarly and prominent public venues, including The New Republic and The Hedgehog Review. Her most recent book is Ars Vitae: The Fate of Inwardness and the Return of the Ancient Arts of Living (2020).

Eugene McCarraher (Villanova University)

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Eugene McCarraher is Professor of Humanities at Villanova Univeristy.  He earned his PhD in history from Rutgers University, and his first book was Christian Critics: Religion and the Impasse in Modern American Social Thought (2000). He contributes regularly to Commonweal, The Hedgehog Review and Raritan and has written for Dissent and The Nation. His most recent book is The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity (2019).

Frank Dikötter (University of Hong Kong)

Frank Dikötter has been Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong since 2006. Before coming to Hong Kong he was Professor of the Modern History of China at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He graduated with his PhD in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies after doing his undergraduate work at the University of Geneva. He has published a dozen books, including the People’s Trilogy about modern China. Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, won the 2011 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, Britain’s most prestigious book award for non-fiction. The second instalment, The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution, 1945-1957, was short-listed for the Orwell Prize in 2014. The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962-1976 concludes the trilogy and was short-listed for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize in 2017.