PULLMAN – Dr. Norman A. Graebner, Randolph P. Compton Professor of History and Public Affairs, Emeritus, University of Virginia, will present a lecture titled “Realism amid the Perils of Partiality.”
His talk, which is free of charge and open to the public, will be held Wednesday, April 18, at 7 p.m. in Todd Hall, Room 120.
In his talk, Graebner contends that history warns against taking sides. His research for the presentation looks back to John Quincy Adams’ famous admonition that the United States be the well-wisher of freedom and independence of all and defender only of her own. Graebner will provide his audience an overview of disasters he says have occurred because the U.S. became partisan and defended others at the expense of American national interest.
A U.S. foreign policy expert, Graebner is the author or coauthor of 10 books and more than 130 articles, essays and book chapters. For 30 years he has been contributing editor of “Current History: A Journal of Contemporary World Affairs.”
Graebner received his bachelor’s degree from Milwaukee State Teachers College (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) in 1939, his M.A. from the University of Oklahoma in 1940 and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1949. He holds an M.A. from Oxford University as well as six honorary degrees.
Graebner’s major awards include the Thomas Jefferson Award of the University of Virginia, the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professorship at Oxford University, and election to the Society of American Historians, the Massachusetts Historical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Graebner estimates his former students number approximately 30,000, perhaps more than any other American historian.
An invited lecturer at 200 colleges and universities in the United States, Britain, Australia and Germany, he was one of the early Pettyjohn Lecturers at WSU.
For more information, visit http://libarts.wsu.edu/history/ or http://www.wsu.edu/ or http://www.currenthistory.com/.
