The US and Europe: Coming to Terms with Change
The Institute for Human Sciences was founded in November 2001, in the immediate wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, during a time of growing tensions between the United States and Europe, with the goal of increasing understanding across the Atlantic. A year later, in November 2002, we launched a lecture series, on the transatlantic relationship, that continues to this day.
In today’s podcast, we bring you the inaugural lecture in that series, given on November 6, 2002, prior to the war in Iraq, entitled “The US and Europe: Coming to Terms with Change.” Our speaker is James Hoge, Editor-in-Chief of Foreign Affairs, and a member of the Institute’s Board of Directors. Responding to James Hoge is David Fromkin, University Professor and Professor of International Relations at Boston University.
It was in the summer of 2002, that Robert Kagan’s essay “Power and Weakness,” announcing that Americans are from Mars while Europeans are from Venus, made such a splash, particularly among neoconservatives. While tensions across the Atlantic have largely abated, the need for understanding and knowledge has not, and the goal of the EU for You podcast is to actively explore the political and cultural differences between the United States and Europe, with the aim of increasing understanding across international borders.
James Hoge describes the frayed relationship between the US and Europe in the aftermath of September 11, but argues – convincingly – that our differences are not unbridgeable and need not signal a parting of the ways.
This lecture was aired on WBUR, New England’s largest public radio station on November 24, 2002; we are grateful to WBUR for making the recording available to EU for You.
Links:
Columbia Journalism Review Podcast: Delacorte Lecture with Foreign Affairs’s Jim Hoge