10/25
2010
Seminar

The President, Democracy and Permanent War

6:00 pm - 6:00 pm
WCHP Lecture Hall
Portland Campus
Dana D. Nelson
Free and open to the public

Our civically trained desire to see the US President as 鈥渢he most powerful man in the world鈥 has had the effect of allowing individual presidents incrementally, and steadily, to increase the power of that branch, most recently in the aftermath of 9/11, when Congress gave to the Executive their branch鈥檚 right to supervise war powers (a Constitutional power which Congress has in fact not exercised since December 8, 1941). Professor Nelson's talk focuses on how post-Reagan US Presidentialism promulgates war as a structure of democratic feeling. She develops her argument by looking at how the United States' military presidency has recreated politics as war and at the traction an extraordinary theory of executive power (the so-called "unitary executive") has been able to gain within our militarized political culture.

Address

WCHP Lecture Hall
United States

C G H Brand