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Ashraf Swelam, a World Fellow at Yale University, recalls his role as an Egyptian diplomat in Washington in the days following the September 11 attacks. He talks about the critical mutual interests of the US and Egypt, challenges to the relationship and the broader question of peace in the Middle East.
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As one of the youngest women elected to Singapore’s parliament, World Fellow Penny Low’s expertise in finance allows her to exert considerable influence. She is a strong proponent of social entrepreneurism.
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Professor Blight uses Herman Melville’s poem “On the Slain Collegians” to introduce the horrifying slaughter of 1864. The architect of the strategy that would eventually lead to Union victory, but at a staggering human cost, was Ulysses S. Grant, brought East to assume control of all Union armies in 1864. Professor Blight narrates the campaigns of 1864, including the Battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, and the siege of Petersburg. While Robert E. Lee battled Grant to a stalemate in Virginia, however, William Tecumseh Sherman’s Union forces took Atlanta before beginning their March to the Sea, destroying Confederate morale and fighting power from the inside. Professor Blight closes his lecture with a description of the first Memorial Day, celebrated by African Americans in Charleston, SC 1865.
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This lecture probes the reasons for confederate defeat and union victory. Professor Blight begins with an elucidation of the loss-of-will thesis, which suggests that it was a lack of conviction on the home front that assured confederate defeat, before offering another of other popular explanations for northern victory: industrial capacity, political leadership, military leadership, international diplomacy, a pre-existing political culture, and emancipation. Blight warns, however, that we cannot forget the battlefield, and, to this end, concludes his lecture with a discussion of the decisive Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July of 1863.
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Professor Blight begins his lecture with a description of the sea change in Civil War scholarship heralded by the Social History revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Along with a focus on the experience of the common solider, women, and African Americans, a central component of this shift in scholarly emphasis was an increased interest in the effects of the war on the Union and Confederate home fronts. After suggesting some of the ways in which individual Americans experienced the war, Professor Blight moves to a discussion of the war’s effect on industry and economics, North and South. The lecture concludes with a description of the increased activism of the federal government during the war, an activism that found expression in finance, agriculture, taxation, building railroads, and, most importantly, in emancipation.
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In Episode 13, Chris Gondek speaks with (1) Richard Sennett, winner of the 2006 Hegel Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities and social sciences, about the art of craftsmanship; and (2) Gus Speth, Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale, about how the free market system will need to adjust in the face of serious environmental changes.
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In Episode 12, Chris Gondek speaks with (1) Victoria Clark about Zionism and the American evangelical community and (2) Daniel J. Solove about the permanent and global nature of the Internet affecting people’s reputations.
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In Episode 10, Chris Gondek speaks with (1) Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones about the earliest beginnings of the bureau, their current fights with organized crime, and the war on terror, and with (2) Russell Korobkin about the current and future legal issues surrounding stem cell therapy.
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In Episode 11, Chris Gondek speaks with (1) A. K. Sandoval-Strausz who explores the idea of American hospitality and the modern hotel as an uniquely American invention, and with (2) Claudia Nahson about the art of William Steig — the well-known cartoonist and cover artist for The New Yorker.
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This lecture focuses on the process of emancipation after the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The Proclamation, Professor Blight suggests, had four immediate effects: it made the Union army an army of emancipation; it encouraged slaves to strike against slavery; it committed the US to a policy of emancipation in the eyes of Europe; and it allowed African Americans to enlist in the Union Army. In the end, ten percent of Union soldiers would be African American. A number of factors, Professor Blight suggests, combined to influence the timing of emancipation in particular areas of the South, including geography, the nature of the slave society, and the proximity of the Union army.