Political Science

2015 CONSTITUTION DAY LECTURE Dr. Norma Thompson is Associate Director of the Whitney Humanities Center and Senior Lecturer in the Humanities at Yale University. Her scholarship and teaching are in the humanities, with special interests in political philosophy.

Melissa Willard-Foster, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Vermont, will discuss her new book manuscript examining why foreign imposed regime change is most often imposed on the weak and friendless, despite conventional wisdom suggesting that these states should acquiesce when facing a strong challenge. Why don’t weak regimes simply negotiate rather than forcing regime change from outside?

This talk follows the trajectories of the survivors of the 1915 Armenian Genocide who remained inside Turkish borders after the signing of the 1918 Mudros Armistice (and during the Allied occupation years of Istanbul) and after the 1923 establishment of the new country as the Turkish Republic. How did the Kemalist state treat the remaining Armenians? What were Armenians’ responses to the new (but also old) Turkish regime?

Professor Scott Wolford, Asso. Professor of Political Science, University of Texas, will describe his research on leadership transitions and the prospects for interstate war in the context of the incoming American administration. What should we expect from foreign leaders when the leadership of any nation changes? How will they react to the new leadership in the United States? Dr. Wolford will offer insights into the international challenges facing the new administration

Health care spending is a key focus for U.S. policy makers as high and increasing health costs can impede access to care and impose undue financial burdens on patients. One potential solution is to lower health care prices, which are typically higher in the U.S. than in other countries and are highly variable both within and across areas. Revealing prices paid through price transparency initiatives, particularly in combination with insurance designs that expose consumers to higher costs, has been promoted as a way to lower prices.

Political Science majors considering a senior thesis should attend this meeting. We will detail the thesis writing process, requirements and timeline and answer any questions students may have

Lecture “Normalizing US-Cuban Relations: The Obama Legacy” by Peter Kornbluh, Senior Analyst at the National Security Archives. Kornbluh currently directs the Archive’s Cuba and Chile Documentation Projects, and formerly was co-director of the Iran-contra documentation project and director of the Archive’s project on U.S. policy toward Nicaragua. From 1990-1999, he taught at Columbia University. He has authored numerous articles and four books, including his latest —”Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana” (UNC Press, 2014).

This will be a general information session covering all opportunities available to students at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Maren Gauldin, assistant director of global recruiting at MIIS, and Orion Lewis, professor of political science, will provide audiovisual presentation and engage students in an open ended discussion of Monterey programs and how they fits with their undergraduate education. Light refreshments provided.

Wilfred M. McClay, Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty, University of Oklahoma - Professor McClay is a prize-winning scholar of American intellectual and cultural history. He served for eleven years on the National Council on the Humanities and is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. A prolific essayist, he is author of Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Civic Life in Modern America; and The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America.