Coming up at the Mershon Center
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Morris P. Fiorina
The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics
3:30 p.m., Barrister Club, 25 W. 11th Ave.
 Morris P. Fiorina is Wendt Family Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution. He has written widely on American government and politics, with special emphasis on topics in the study of representation and elections. His most recent books include Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, with Samuel Abrams and Jeremy Pope (Longman, 2004); and Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics, with Samuel Abrams (Oklahoma, 2009). Drawing on polling results and other data, Fiorina examines the disconnect between an unrepresentative "political class" and the citizenry it purports to represent, showing how politicians have become more polarized while voters remain moderate. Read more and register
Monday, April 30, 2012
Williamson Murray
Saddam's World View: The Iran-Iraq War and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East
3:30 p.m., Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
 Williamson Murray is Minerva Fellow at the Naval War College and professor emeritus of history at The Ohio State University. He studies military and diplomatic history and is currently working on a number projects related to operational history of the Civil War, study of the Iran-Iraq War, and hybrid warfare. Murray is author of The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938-1939, The Path to Ruin (Princeton, 1984); Air War, 1914-1945 (Weidendeld and Nicholson, 1999); and The Iraq War: A Military History (Harvard, 2003), written with Major General Robert Scales Jr. Read more and register
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Marc Lynch
The Arab Uprising
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Marc Lynch is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, where he is the director of the Institute for Middle East Studies and of the Project on Middle East Political Science. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and edits the Middle East Channel for ForeignPolicy.com. Lynch will be speaking about his latest book, The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East (Public Affairs, 2012), which explores the ramifications of upheaval in the Arab world, and how the West should react. A book signing will take place at the event. Read more and register
Thursday-Friday, May 3-4, 2012
Good Works in Central America: Interrogating North American Voluntary Service
Organized by Katherine Borland
Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
 Short-term delegations to Central America for the purpose of providing material aid, assisting with grassroots development, or offering direct service have proliferated in the last four decades. Good Works in Central America critically examines the micro-politics of encounters between privileged visitors (professionals, politically motivated groups, service-learning programs) and impoverished third-world communities they visit, as well as the larger implications of poverty relief efforts organized outside of and sometimes in opposition to existing national and international institutions. The keynote speaker, Nicaragua's Father Fernando Cardenal, has committed his life to direct service to the poor within the framework liberation theology. Read more and register
Monday, May 7, 2012
Nancy Rosenblum
Anti-Politics: The Utopian Turn in Democratic Theory Today
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
 Nancy Rosenblum is Senator Joseph Clark Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government at Harvard University. Her field of research is political theory, both historical and contemporary political thought. She is author of On the Side of the Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship (Princeton, 2008), which received the Walter Channing Cabot Fellow Award from Harvard in 2010 for scholarly eminence, and Membership and Morals: The Personal Uses of Pluralism in America (Princeton, 1998), which was awarded the APSA David Easton Prize in 2000. Her current book project is "Good Neighbor Nation," a study of the moral and political implications of the American ideal of "good neighbor." Read more and register
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Mehdi Khalaji
Iranian Islam and Democracy: Paradox of State and Religion
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
 Mehdi Khalaji is senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, focusing on the politics of Iran and Shiite groups in the Middle East. A Shiite theologian by training, Khalaji has also served on the editorial boards of two prominent Iranian periodicals and produced for the BBC as well as the U.S. government's Persian news service. Khalaji is the author of several books, including The New Order of the Clerical Establishment in Iran (H&S Media, 2011), written in Farsi. His forthcoming book is A Political Biography of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader. Khalaji also writes a bilingual English and Persian blog, MehdiKhalaji.com. Read more and register
Friday, May 11, 2012
Thomas Zeiler
Globalization's Perils: From Archie Bunker to Occupy Wall Street
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
 Thomas Zeiler is professor of history and international affairs at University of Colorado-Boulder, where he directs the Global Studies Academic Program. He teaches U.S. diplomatic history and globalization. Zeiler is author of several books, including Ambassadors in Pinstripes: The Spalding World Baseball Tour and the Birth of the American Empire (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), Unconditional Defeat: Japan, America, and the End of World War II (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), and Globalization and the American Century (Cambridge, 2003). Zeiler serves as executive editor of Diplomatic History. He is also a member of the State Department's Historical Advisory Committee. Read more and register
Other events
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Mark Winne
Who Controls the Food We Eat?
5:30 p.m., Faculty Club Grand Lounge, 181 S. Oval Drive
Stanley Muroff Civil Liberties Forum, John Glenn School of Public Affairs
Is it the consumer or an increasingly small number of food corporations and public officials? Even though we may be winning the battle for healthy and sustainably produced food at the grocery store, we may ultimately lose the war in the public policy arena. As he reviews the current national food landscape, Mark Winne will propose that being a good food citizen is just as necessary as being a good food consumer to assure a food system that is just, sustainable, and democratic.
Winne currently writes, speaks, and consults extensively on community food system topics including hunger and food insecurity, local and regional agriculture, community food assessment, and food policy. He also does policy communication and food policy council work for the Community Food Security Coalition. Winne blogs regularly at markwinne.com and is a regular contributor at civileats.org and foodforthought.net.
He is author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty and Food Rebels, Guerilla Gardeners, and Smart Cookin' Mamas: Fighting Back in an Age of Industrial Agriculture. Read more and register
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
The Dark Side of Chocolate
6:45 p.m., Hale Hall (MLK Lounge), 153 W. 12th Ave.
Sponsored by Unplugging Society
Unplugging Society: Women of Color Think Tank advised by Patricia Cunningham would like to invite you to our upcoming event, a screening of The Dark Side of Chocolate. While we enjoy the sweet taste of chocolate, the reality is strikingly different for African children. In 2001 consumers around the world were outraged to discover that child labor and slavery, trafficking, and other abuses existed on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast, a country that produces nearly half the world's cocoa. An avalanche of negative publicity and consumer demands for answers and solutions soon followed. Please join an open-ended dialogue as we watch the documentary and learn ways to avoid eating chocolate that is unjustly made. For more information contact Isabel at gaitan.4@osu.edu or visit the Facebook event.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Jon Keeton
A Story of Volunteerism: Americans in Korea, Koreans in the World
4 p.m., Great Hall Meeting Room, Ohio Union, 1739 N. High St.
Sponsored by Institute for Korean Studies
The Institute for Korean Studies is pleased to sponsor "A Story of Volunteerism: Americans in Korea, Koreans in the World." This traveling exhibit celebrates the experiences of the U.S. Peace Corps in Korea and the Korean International Cooperation Agency, through a display of 30 photographs depicting the Peace Corps volunteer experience in the Republic of Korea and the work of the volunteers from the Korea International Cooperation Agency. The reception will feature a keynote address by Jon Keeton, former director of Peace Corps Korea and regional director for Peace Corps in North Africa, Near East, Asia and the Pacific. Korean refreshments will be served.
Thursday-Friday, May 10-11, 2012
Immigration: Moving Forward
11th Floor Thompson Library, 1858 Nel Ave. Mall
Saxbe Auditorium, Moritz College of Law, 55 N. 12th Ave.
Immigration: Moving Forward is the second major interdisciplinary conference for the yearlong campus-wide Conversation on Immigration, organized by the Center for Ethics and Human Values Innovation Group as part of its Conversations on Morality, Politics, and Society project. The conference will focus on legal rules and government policies concerning immigration in the United States by bringing together a distinguished set of researchers to address the main challenges and opportunities immigration poses in the modern world and how those challenges can be overcome and the opportunities realized. The event aims to interest not only researchers and students, but the broader community. The keynote speaker is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas. Read more and register
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Alma J. Powell
9th annual James F. Patterson Land-Grant University Lecture
11:30 a.m., Archie Griffin Ballroom, Ohio Union, 1739 N. High St.
Alma J. Powell, board chair of America's Promise Alliance, will be the keynote speaker for the 9th annual James F. Patterson Land-Grant University Lecture. Join the Office of Outreach and Engagement on May 16 at 11:30 a.m. in the Ohio Union, Archie Griffin Ballroom for this year's event. America's Promise Alliance is committed to seeing that children experience the Five Promises -- the fundamental resources they need to succeed. The Alliance is currently leading a 10-year campaign, Grad Nation, mobilizing America to end the dropout crisis. The university's C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Award nominee and recipients of the 2012 Engagement Impact Grants and Service Learning Awards will be featured at the Patterson Lecture. Read more and register: http://go.osu.edu/pattersonlecture.
Previous events available for viewing
Zhu Feng spoke at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies on April 16, 2012.
Zhu discusses Chinese policies toward Middle East
Watch a streaming video of Zhu Feng, professor of international studies and deputy director of the Center for International and Strategic Studies at Peking University, speaking about "China's Policies Toward the Middle East." He is author of International Relations Theory and East Asian Security (People’s University Press, 2007) and Ballistic Missile Defense and International Security (Shanghai People's Press, 2001).
Full Archive
Visit the Event Recordings page for the full list of streaming videos from previous events sponsored by the Mershon Center. Note: Streaming videos recorded before Fall 2010 require RealPlayer. If you do not have RealPlayer, you can download it free.
Mershon News
Millett wins 2012 Truman Book Award
 Allan R. Millett, General Raymond E. Mason Jr. Professor of Military History Emeritus, has received the 2012 Truman Book Award for The War for Korea, 1950-1951: They Came from the North.
The Harry S. Truman Book Award, given by the Harry S. Truman Library Institute for National and International Affairs, recognizes the best book published within a two-year period that deals with some aspect of the life or career of Harry S. Truman or the history of the United States during his presidency.
The book award committee said Millett’s book was the standout among a field of 28 entries and believes Millett’s work on the Korean War -- The War for Korea is the second part of a trilogy -- "will become the standard by which other studies of the conflict are measured and a key resource for students of the war for many years to come."
Millett is a specialist in the history of American military policy and 20th century wars and military institutions.
In the past decade, he has acquired international stature as an expert on the Korean War. Besides his own trilogy, Millett served as an editorial consultant for the Korean Ministry of Defense's official history, The Korean War, 3 vols. (1998-99) for which he arranged an American edition (2000-01).
He then served as co-editor of Mao's Generals Remember Korea (2001) with Yi Xiaoping and Yu Bin.
Millett has published 27 essays, articles, encyclopedia entries and commentaries on the Korean War; he was instrumental in the Department of Defense's revision of the American death statistics (all causes) from 54,246 to 36,574.
An associate at the Mershon Center, Millett is currently Ambrose Professor of History and director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans. He is also senior military advisor at National World War II Musuem.
'Origins' examines climate change, population growth
 Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective is pleased to announce the publication of its May 2012 issue, featuring "Climate, Human Population and Human Survival: What the Deep Past Tells Us about the Future," by John Brooke.
The controversies generated by climate science in recent years center around the human relationship with the natural world and with natural resources. This month, historian John Brooke puts that critical question in historical perspective -- deep historical perspective. For most of human history, our species had to struggle to survive powerful natural forces, like climate and disease.
In the past three centuries, however, things have changed dramatically: that struggle has been reshaped by the unprecedented growth of the human population -- from under 1 billion to now over 7 billion. John Brooke's essay forces us to ask whether our population can continue to grow given the current Malthusian pressure on resources and on the earth system itself.
Origins is a free, non-commercial publication from the Public History Initiative and eHistory in Ohio State University's History Department. Each month, an academic expert analyzes a particular current issue -- political, cultural, or social -- in a larger, deeper historical context. In addition to the analysis provided in each month's feature, Origins also includes podcasts, images, maps, graphics, timelines, and other material to complement the article.
Origins can be found at http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/origins/. The podcast is found at http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/origins/podcasts.cfm. You can also follow Origins on Twitter: OriginsOSU
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