Mearsheimer talks to explore ‘Liberal Ideals & International Realities’

John J. Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, will give a series of three lectures in November on “Liberal Ideals & International Realities” for the Henry L. Stimson Lectures on World Affairs at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale.

The “Liberal Ideals & International Realities” lectures will focus on three themes: “The Roots of Liberal Hegemony,” on Monday, Nov. 13; “The False Promise of Liberal Hegemony” on Wednesday, Nov. 15; and “The Case for Restraint,” on Thursday, Nov. 16. All three lectures begin at 4:30 p.m. in Rm. 203 of Henry R. Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Ave. They are free and open to the public. The lectures are sponsored by the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies and the Yale University Press.

Mearsheimer has written extensively about security issues and international politics more generally. He has published five books, including “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics,” which won the Joseph Lepgold Book Prize and has been translated into eight languages, and “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” (with Stephen M. Walt), which made the New York Times best seller list and has been translated into 24 languages. He has also written many articles that have appeared in academic journals like International Security, and popular magazines like Foreign Affairs and the London Review of Books. Mearsheimer has won a number of teaching awards and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003.

The funding for the lecture series comes from an anonymous donor, in honor of Henry L. Stimson, Yale College 1889, an attorney and statesman whose government service culminated with his tenure as secretary of war during World War II.

Since 1998, the MacMillan Center and the Yale University Press have collaborated to bring distinguished diplomats and foreign policy experts to the center to lecture on their books that are published by the Yale Press.

Previous Stimson Lectures have included “Political Order in Changing Societies” by Samuel P. Huntington; “Financial Crises in Emerging Markets” by Alexandre Lamfalussy; “Arms and Influence” by Thomas C. Schelling; “The Arab Center, The Promise of Moderation” by Ambassador Marwan Muasher; “Beyond the Democratic Maze” by John Dunn; “What Happened to National Liberation” by Michael Walzer; “The Imprint of Congress” by David Mayhew; and “FDR’s Third Hundred Days” by Susan Dunn.