In 2015 and 2016 the US Centre received support from the US Embassy in London and the British Association for American Studies for an ‘America in Global Perspective’ speaker series. This series featured high-profile US-based academics presenting at public lectures.
Do American Universities Promote Income Inequality?
21 March 2017
Affluent Americans support more conservative economic policies than the non-affluent and government responds disproportionately to these views. Yet little is known about the emergence of these consequential views which are partly traceable to socialization that occurs on predominately affluent college campuses, especially those with norms of financial gain and especially among socially embedded students. Tali Mendelberg explored how ‘the affluent campus effect’ illustrates how college socialization partly explains why affluent Americans support economically conservative policies.
Anxiety, Fear, and National Identity: Anti-Immigration Politics and the Rise of Latino Power in the US
14 March 2017
Neil Foley explored how the surge in immigration since the 1970s has led to increasing levels of xenophobia resulting in anti-immigrant politics and policies, including militarization of the border, state laws curtailing rights of undocumented immigrants, mass detention and deportation, the building of a 700-mile border fence in 2006, and Donald Trump’s recent promise to build a wall along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico.
Race, Reform and the New Retrenchment: the perils of post-racialism after Obama
11 May 2016
Heightening tensions in the US over police killings of black people have undermined confidence that the election of Barack Obama signaled a new era on race relations in the US. Through a Critical Race Theory prism, Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw discussed Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name as challenges to contemporary jurisprudence on race, and assessed the new openings presented by current events.
Who will be the next US President?
24 February 2016
Professor Lawrence Jacobs, Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies and Director of the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, evaluated the most polarizing and anti-establishment candidates in modern US politics, speculated on who will win the nomination and why, and what this might mean for the 2016 presidential election.
The Future of Work
25 January 2016
Anne-Marie Slaughter, president and CEO of New America, and former Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, visited LSE and discussed the need to transform gender roles for men as much as women and to reinvent the workplace.
Lessons for the Euro from America's Past
19 January 2016
Drawing on early America’s struggle to develop a single currency, Professor Jeffry Frieden discussed the implications for the European Union’s efforts today to provide monetary and financial stability.
US Flag backlit, By Jnn13 (Own work) is licensed under [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons