George Washington Forum News and Events

Mary Hirschfeld (Villanova University)

Mary Hirschfeld is Associate Professor of Economics and Theology at Villanova University, where she has taught since 2011. She earned a PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1989 and taught economics at Occidental College for fifteen years. In 2003, she quit her tenured position to pursue a second PhD in moral theology at the University of Notre Dame. Her scholarly work considers the boundaries between economics and theology, and her latest book is Aquinas and the Market: Toward a Humane Economy (2018).

Michael J. Green (Georgetown University)

Michael J. Green is Senior Vice President for Asia and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Director of Asian Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He graduated from Kenyon College with highest honors in history in 1983 and received his M.A. from Johns Hopkins School of Advance and International Studies (SAIS) in 1987 and his PhD in 1994. He served on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) from 2001 to 2005. Before joining the NSC staff, he was a senior fellow of East Asian security at the Council on Foreign Relations; director of the Edward O. Reischauer Center and Foreign Policy Institute and assistant professor at SAIS at Johns Hopkins University; research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses; and senior advisor on Asia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. His most recent book is By More than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific since 1783 (2017). This event is co-sponsored by the George Washington Forum and the Contemporary History Institute.

Jeremy Black (University of Exeter)

Jeremy Black MBE is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He studied at Cambridge and Oxford before joining Durham Univesity as a lecturer in 1980. He joined Exeter University as Established Chair in History in 1996. A prolific lecturer and author, he has published more than 100 books. Many concern aspects of eighteenth-century British, European and American political, diplomatic and military history, but he has also published on the history of the press, cartography, warfare, culture and on the nature and uses of history. His most recent book is English Nationalism: A Short History (2018). This event is co-sponsored with the Contemporary History Institute.

William Messenger (National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation)

William Messenger is a staff attorney at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. He graduated with a B.B.A. from OHIO in 1997 before earning his J.D. from George Washington University in 2001. He has litigated nearly 100 cases, including over a dozen at the Appellate-level, on behalf of NRWLD Foundation-aided employees and other individuals. His cases defend workers’ freedom from compulsory unionism and focus on the First Amendment and other constitutional rights. He has argued twice before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2014, he successfully argued Harris v. Quinn, securing a ruling that requiring homecare providers to pay union fees violated the First Amendment. Four years later, he also briefed and successfully argued Janus v. AFSCME, in which the Supreme Court ruled that non-union government workers cannot be required to pay union fees as a condition of employment.

Keith Baker (Stanford), Mark Blitz (Claremont McKenna), Michael Braddick (Sheffield), and Catherine Zuckert (Notre Dame) will deliver plenary lectures