Events Detail

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A Book Discussion with Inderjeet Parmar on...

Foundations of the American Century:

The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations in the Rise of American Power

Thursday, May 31 - 12:00 to 2:00 p.m.

Hudson Institute - Betsy and Walter Stern Conference Center

1015 15th Street, NW - Suite 600

Washington, DC 20005

Event Description

“Although they do contribute to society in positive ways, my research over the past decade and a half, revealed in Foundations of the American Century, shows that the big U.S. foundations—Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie—made fundamental contributions to America’s rise to global leadership, a global imperium sometimes more benignly promoted as the 'American century.'

"This includes some of the darkest chapters in American foreign policy: hubristically guiding economic development policies that exacerbated problems in the newly independent Nigeria and played a role in its slide into civil war; sponsoring and guiding opponents of the leftist Sukharno administration in Indonesia and contributing to the bloodshed that accompanied the rise of the right-wing militarist Suharto regime; and funding and training right wing economists as well as their centrist and even leftist opponents in Chile as it careened into the bloody military coup of 1973.”

The Bradley Center hosted a discussion of this provocative argument with a panel of experts, including author Inderjeet Parmar, Carnegie Scholar at the Rockefeller Archives Center Patricia Rosenfield, Thomas Asher of the Social Science Research Council, and CUNY Professor Kathleen McCarthy. Hudson Institute Senior Fellow William Schambra moderated the discussion.

Required Reading

"Not So Cuddly," berfrois, April 4, 2012.

"Foundation Networks and American Hegemony," European Journal of American Studies, February 2012.

Program and Panel

11:30 a.m.

Registration, lunch buffet

12:00 p.m.

Introduction by Bradley Center Director William Schambra

12:10 p.m.

Panel discussion

Thomas Asher, Program Director at the Social Science Research Council

Kathleen McCarthy, Professor of American History at The Graduate Center of CUNY

Inderjeet Parmar, Author and Professor of Government at The University of Manchester

Patricia Rosenfield, Carnegie Scholar at the Rockefeller Archives Center

1:10

Question-and-answer session

2:00

Adjournment