American Empire

Joshua B. Freeman, David Harvey, Lisa McGirr, David Nasaw, Adolph L. Reed, Jr

What are the costs of creating a global empire? David Nasaw (GC, History) will moderate a discussion of four distinguished scholars as they consider Joshua Freeman's new book, American Empire, 1945-2000: The Rise of a Global Power, the Democratic Revolution at Home (2012) and the profound shifts in economic and political power that have taken place in America since the Second World War. Freeman argues that a democratic revolution took place in the United States after the war, which was linked to a period of enormous economic growth. In the 1970s, when the well-distributed economic growth ground to a halt, benefits accrued only to corporations and the rich. America was in the process of transforming itself into a new kind of empire, with consequences we are living with today.

Cosponsored by the PhD program in History; the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics; and the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies.

FREE and open to the public.