A nation must think before it acts.
Announcing Walter A. McDougall as the Ginsburg-Satell Chair of FPRI’s Center for the Study of America and the West
Announcing Walter A. McDougall as the Ginsburg-Satell Chair of FPRI’s Center for the Study of America and the West
As Chair, he will deliver the Annual Ginsburg-Satell Lecture on American Character and Identity, with the inaugural lecture set for Tuesday, May 15, to be hosted and cosponsored by the Museum of the American Revolution. The title of the first lecture is “America’s Machiavellian Moment: Origins of the Atlantic Republican Tradition – Or Where Did the Founders Get Their Ideas?.” In this lecture, McDougall will delve deeply into the origins of the American political tradition by exploring the legacies of Medieval and Renaissance Europe, and the transmission of these ideas across time and space.
The chair and the annual lecture were made possible by gifts from the Stanley and Arlene Ginsburg Family Foundation and Edward Satell.
FPRI’s Center for the Study of America and the West, directed by Ronald J. Granieri, reflects an interest in Transatlantic relations that is an integral part of FPRI’s DNA. It encourages research and publication that illuminate the key dimensions of American identity and Western civilization, and seeks to enrich the teaching of American and world history through a series of weekend-long professional development programs for high school teachers. The Center publishes the American Review of Books, Blogs, and Bull; sponsors a monthly interactive program on Geopolitics with Granieri; and produces a series of animated video primers for students on topics in American history and government.
Walter A. McDougall is the founding Co-Chairman of FPRI’s Butcher History Institute and Chairman of FPRI’s Board of Advisors. He is also the Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. His articles and columns have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Commentary, and other national publications. McDougall is the author of several critically acclaimed books including:
- The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (1985), which won a Pulitzer Prize
- Let the Sea Make a Noise: A History of the North Pacific From Magellan to MacArthur(1992)
- Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776 (1997)
- Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History 1585-1828 (2004)
- Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era 1829-1877(2008), which was chosen by the Athenaeum of Philadelphia as best book of the year by a local author.
His latest book is The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How America’s Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest (Yale University Press, 2017). One reviewer described McDougall as a “national treasure” while another labeled him “America’s greatest living historian.” His honors include a Pulitzer Prize, election to the Society of American Historians, and appointment to the Library of Congress Council of Scholars.
McDougall received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago and is a veteran of the Vietnam War.