Past Events

On Tuesday, October 18th, the Clements Center for National Security and the Civitas Institute will host Paul Carrese, Founding Director of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, for a talk on "The Enduring Core of American Foreign Policy: Montesquieu and the Right of Nations." Join us at 12:15 pm in the Eastwoods Room, Texas Union. 

Paul Carrese is the founding director of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. For nearly two decades he was a professor of political science at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and co-founded a new honors program blending liberal arts education and leadership education. He is author of The Cloaking of Power: Montesquieu, Blackstone, and the Rise of Judicial Activism, and co-editor of three other books – on George Washington, constitutionalism, and American grand strategy. His most recent book is Democracy in Moderation: Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Sustainable Liberalism. He has held fellowships at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar; Harvard University; the University of Delhi (as a Fulbright fellow); and the James Madison Program, Politics Department, Princeton University.  He served on the founding advisory board of the Program on Public Discourse at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and co-led a national study funded by the NEH and US Department of Education, Educating for American Democracy, on improving American history and civics education in K-12 schools with partners from Harvard and Tufts Universities and iCivics (released in 2021).

For more information about this event, contact Elizabeth Doughtie at elizabeth.doughtie@utexas.edu.

On Tuesday, October 18th, the Clements Center for National Security and the Civitas Institute will host Paul Carrese, Founding Director of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, for a talk on "The Enduring Core of American Foreign Policy: Montesquieu and the Right of Nations." Join us at 12:15 pm in the Eastwoods Room, Texas Union. 

About this event

How does social change happen? When do social movements take off? Cass Robert Sunstein, an American legal scholar from Harvard University, joins the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy (CSRD) at The University of Texas at Austin to discuss the crucial role of social norms—and on their frequent collapse. He will also explore “partyism,” when identification with a political party creates a strong bias against all members of an opposing party—which can both fuel and block social change.

About The William C. Powers, Jr. Speaker Series

Honoring the memory of former UT President William C. Powers, Jr., this speaker series invites thought leaders to present research in American politics and public policy in reflection of his commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Speaker

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Cass R. Sunstein is currently the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard. He is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. In 2018, he received the Holberg Prize from the government of Norway, sometimes described as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for law and the humanities. In 2020, the World Health Organization appointed him as Chair of its technical advisory group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health. From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and after that, he served on the President’s Review Board on Intelligence and Communications Technologies and on the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board. Mr. Sunstein has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and he has advised officials at the United Nations, the European Commission, the World Bank, and many nations on issues of law and public policy. He serves as an adviser to the Behavioural Insights Team in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Sunstein is author of hundreds of articles and dozens of books, including Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler, 2008), Simpler: The Future of Government (2013), The Ethics of Influence (2015), #Republic (2017), Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide (2017), The Cost-Benefit Revolution (2018), On Freedom (2019), Conformity (2019), How Change Happens (2019), and Too Much Information (2020). He is now working on a variety of projects involving the regulatory state, “sludge” (defined to include paperwork and similar burdens), fake news, and freedom of speech.

On Thursday, October 13th, the Strauss Center is hosting Dr. Nicholas Weaver, founder of Skerry Technologies, as he discusses a significant new weapon on the battlefield: the small autonomous drone. Small drones have already changed the landscape of war across armed conflicts in the past decade, from Syria, to Mexico, to Ukraine. The future of drone usage on the battlefield is constantly evolving. The cost of drones has dropped and problems have emerged between what the human controllers want the drone to do, and what the drone is actually programmed to do. Rather than banning drones entirely, Dr. Weaver offers suggestions for how to prepare for drone-led conflicts in the future. 

This event is free and open to the public. No RSVP required. Lunch will be served. For more information on this event, contact Susan Crane at scrane@austin.utexas.edu.

Biography

Nicholas Weaver received a B.A. in Astrophysics and Computer Science in 1995, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2003 from the University of California at Berkeley, with a particular focus on computer architecture. 

In 2003, he joined the International Computer Science Institute, first as a postdoc and then as a staff researcher, with a primary focus on Computer Security.  His research focuses include network security, worms, botnets, network measurement, and online criminality (including cryptocurrencies).  Other areas have included both hardware acceleration and software parallelization of network intrusion detection, defenses for DNS resolvers, and tools for detecting ISP-introduced manipulations of a user’s network connection. 

He also has taught at UC Berkeley in the Computer Science department for several years as a lecturer, but has now left that position to focus on his own startup, Skerry Technologies, focused on developing hardware and software for low cost, human safe, fully autonomous small drones.

On Wednesday, October 12, the Clements Center for National Security will host Kevin McCranie, Professor of Comparative Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College, for a book talk on his recent release Mahan, Corbett, and the Foundations of Naval Strategic Thought. Join us at 12:15 pm in SRH 3.122, The LBJ School of Public Affairs.

Professor Kevin D. McCranie, the Philip A. Crowl Professor of Comparative Strategy, specializes in maritime history and strategy. His publications focus on warfare at sea, navies, sea power and joint operations during the age of sail. He is the author of “Mahan, Corbett, and the Foundations of Naval Strategic Thought;” “Admiral Lord Keith and the Naval War against Napoleon;” as well as “Utmost Gallantry: The U.S. and Royal Navies at Sea in the War of 1812.” His articles have appeared in Naval History, The Journal of Military History, the Naval War College Review and The Northern Mariner.

Policy on the Rocks - Networking with LBJ Faculty, Alumni & Students and Learn About Policy at LBJ

Enjoy informal networking with LBJ faculty, alumni, and students. This is a great opportunity to talk about potential career paths, current events, and trends in your policy area of interest. Light bites will be served. 

Join the esteemed LBJ School Faculty for a set of virtual webinars showcasing research, opportunities and hot topics by policy area.  Admissions staff will also be on-hand to answer application questions. 

The LBJ School of Public Affairs is proud to welcome Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez to campus to continue our celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month 2022. This keynote conversation, moderated by JEDI director, Estevan Delgado, will explore Tzintzún Ramirez’s personal call to civil rights advocacy in the Latino and immigrant communities, a calling she honed here in Central Texas. The event will also explore the current local and national landscape of economic justice, racial justice, immigrant rights, civil discourse, and how we can work together to strengthen democracy for generations to come.

This event is co-sponsored by the Office of Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion and LBJ Students Unidos.

About the Speaker

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Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In a special series titled “Policy Lessons from the Past," four Texas-based policy experts will discuss how our shared history impacts today's political environment, spanning topics like racial justice, immigration, global confrontations and the very nature of democracy.

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The LBJ Washington Center presents Dr. Sarah Coleman, a historian from Texas State University. In this discussion moderated by LBJ Professor, Dr. Sergio Garcia-Rios, Dr. Coleman will describe a history of the battles over U.S. immigrants’ rights since 1965—and how these conflicts reshaped access to education, employment, civil liberties and more. This is the subject of her book, The Walls Within: The Politics of Immigration in Modern America.

Can't make the event? Subscribe to LBJ's podcast to listen on demand in November.

Policy on the Rocks - Networking with LBJ Faculty, Alumni & Students and Learn About Policy at LBJ

Enjoy informal networking with LBJ faculty, alumni, and students. This is a great opportunity to talk about potential career paths, current events, and trends in your policy area of interest. Light bites will be served.