U Wisconsin scholar Jeremi Suri to speak on the legacy of Henry Kissinger Feb. 12th

The University of New England will host a lecture by Jeremi Suri, Ph.D., professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who will speak on “Henry Kissinger and the Transformation of International Society: Total War, Nuclear Politics, Migration” Feb. 12, 2009 at noon in the St. Francis Room of the Ketchum Library.

The lecture is sponsored by the UNE History Club. It is free and open to the public.

Professor Suri will examine some of the major changes in the relations between peoples and societies during the twentieth century.

Focusing on the life of Henry Kissinger, the lecture will analyze how the experiences of total war, forced migration, Cold War education, and nuclear politics shaped national debates and local communities. The lecture will also reflect on the legacies of these transformations for scholarship and policy-making in the twenty-first century.

Jeremi Suri is winner of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Class of 1955 Distinguished Teaching Award and Dorothy and Hsin-Nung Yao Teaching Award. In 2007, Smithsonian Magazine named him one of America's "Top Young Innovators" in the humanities and sciences.

He is author of Henry Kissinger and the American Century (2007), The Global Revolutions of 1968 (2007), and Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente (2003). His research emphasizes the interconnections between grassroots politics and elite policy-making.

In his teaching and writing, he seeks to internationalize understanding of American history by focusing on the foreign "others" who have contributed to local and national definitions of identity in the United States. Suri also examines how American citizens - from ordinary men and women through distinguished politicians and businesspeople - have influenced the world outside the United States.