A GUIDE TO COURSES, CURRICULUM, & RESOURCES Compiled by Professor Bert Chapman, MA, MSLS, Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies and Leonard Hochberg, PhD, Coordinator, Mackinder Forum-US SOME PRACTICAL ADVICE: The term “geopolitics” is an overused phrase. It can be heard on television, in the lecture hall, and… Read more »
On February 7, 2021, 1:30-3:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. Time, Professor Bruce Bueno de Mesquita delivered a remarkable and provocative talk entitled “Popes vs Kings: Competition and the Creation of Western Exceptionalism.” Given the subject of his forthcoming book, the significance of the Concordat of Worms, Bueno de Mesquita enters the… Read more »
On January 31, 2021, 1:30-3:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. Time, the Mackinder Forum Seminar engaged in a discussion addressing the question “Will Biden differ from Trump in Foreign Policy While Remaining Essentially the Same?” This weekend’s Mackinder Forum Seminar raised the question of continuity and change in foreign policy across the… Read more »
On January 10, 2021, 1:30-3:00 p.m. Eastern US Time, The Honorable John Hillen presented an engaging and incisive talk entitled “Dueling Visions of America’s Role in the World.” ABSTRACT: In examining the different visions of the two recent Presidential candidates in the 2020 US election, one can discern much more… Read more »
Born in Chicago in 1905, James Burnham attended Princeton University and Balliol College, Oxford, and taught at New York University from the early 1930s until 1953. From 1930-1933, Burnham co-edited Symposium, a review of literary and philosophical criticism. In the early 1930s, he helped organize the American Workers Party, which later… Read more »
Born in 1840 on the campus of West Point, where his father was an instructor, Alfred Thayer Mahan graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1859 and served in the Union Navy during the American Civil War. In 1884, he joined the faculty of the Naval War College in Newport,… Read more »
James Fairgrieve (1870-1953) was a British geographer and teacher who in 1914 wrote Geography and World Power (published in 1915), a work that sought to show how geography “controls” history. Fairgieve studied at the London School of Economics from 1903 to 1910, obtained a London University certificate in geography in 1912, and… Read more »
On Sunday, December 13, 2020, 1:30-3:00 p.m. Eastern Time (US), our final Mackinder Forum Seminar of the year took place. Professor Kent Calder addressed the following topic: “The Logic of Eurasian Integration.” TOPIC FOR CONSIDERATION: Geography arguably dictates many basic parameters of political-economic competition. It conveys certain latent, potential advantages… Read more »
Our next-to-last seminar for 2020 was scheduled on Sunday, December 6, 2020, 1:30-3:00 p.m. Eastern Time, US. Professor Andrew Latham of Macalester College presented a talk on “China: A Faltering Challenger.” ABSTRACT: Over the past year or so, China has made a series of bold moves across the Indo-Pacific region… Read more »
On November 22, 2020, 1:30-3:00 PM Eastern US Time, Gordon Chang presented “China’s Mackinderism” to the Mackinder Forum Seminar. ABSTRACT: Chinese policymakers are Mackinderites; and they are also believers in the Rimland Theory of Nicholas John Spykman, as evident from their all-out plan to build infrastructure in Central Asia. The… Read more »
