Leading Scholars Bring New Books on War, Strategy, and Great Power Competition to UT Austin

This spring, the Clements Center and its partners hosted 11 book talks, drawing authors from Yale, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and institutions across the United States and Asia to discuss new work on China, American statecraft, revolutionary history, intelligence, and the long arc of conflict.

January Book Talks

Photos from You Must Take Part in the Revolution

The series opened on January 22 with journalist Melissa Chan, hosted by the Asia Policy Program, on her debut graphic novel, You Must Take Part in Revolution. Created with artist Badiucao, the book is set in 2035, with the U.S. and China at war and Taiwan divided. Chan was expelled from China in 2012, the first journalist in more than a decade forced out by Chinese authorities. More photos are on our Flickr page.

On January 28, the Clements Center joined the Concepts in Global History Seminar, the Department of History, the Frank Denius Normandy Scholar Program on WWII, and the Institute for Historical Studies to host Bruno Cabanes, Donald G. & Mary A. Dunn Chair in Modern Military History at Ohio State, for The Ghosts of Peleliu Island. Cabanes discussed his new book, which retraces the experience of Marine Eugene B. Sledge during the 1944 battle for Peleliu, and how military historians approach narrative form when writing about memory and place.

February Book Talks

Photos are from Statecraft 2.0: What America Needs to Lead in a Multipolar World

On February 3, Ambassador Dennis Ross, Counselor and William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, visited the LBJ School for a talk on Statecraft 2.0: What America Needs to Lead in a Multipolar World, co-hosted with International Relations & Global Studies and the LBJ School. Ross served as the U.S. point man on Middle East peace under the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations and later as special advisor on Iran to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. See more photos are on our Flickr page.

The Asia Policy Program returned on February 19 with Chris Horton, a journalist who has covered Taiwan and Greater China for the New York Times, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, and the Financial Times, for a talk on Ghost Nation: The Story of Taiwan and Its Struggle for Survival. Six days later, the Clements Center and Asia Policy Program hosted Jennifer Yip, Assistant Professor of History at the National University of Singapore and a former Clements Center Postdoctoral Fellow, for a talk on Grains of Conflict: The Struggle for Food in China’s Total War, 1937–1945, examining how Nationalist grain policies shaped military strategy and weaponized food as an instrument of war.

March Book Talks

March brought three talks in quick succession. On March 5, the Clements Center, the School of Civic Leadership, and the Department of History hosted Dan Edelstein, William H. Bonsall Professor at Stanford, for The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin, tracing how the concept of revolution evolved from ancient Greece through the Bolshevik seizure of power. See more photos are on our Flickr page.

On March 10, the Clements Center, Asia Policy Program, Intelligence Studies Project, America in the World Consortium, and Strauss Center co-hosted Joseph Torigian, Associate Professor at American University, for The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping, drawing on primary sources to examine how Xi’s father navigated decades of purges and elite power struggles inside the Chinese Communist Party. See more photos are on our Flickr page. On March 11, the Intelligence Studies Project and Asia Policy Program hosted David R. Shedd, former Acting Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, for The Great Heist: China’s Epic Campaign to Steal America’s Secrets, drawing on his 33-year intelligence career. See more photos are on our Flickr page.

April Book Talks

April also brought three talks. On April 2, the Clements Center, the Department of History, and the Strauss Center hosted Francis Gavin, Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS and a Senior Fellow at the Clements Center, for Thinking Historically: A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy, which makes the case for applied historical thinking as a tool for contemporary strategic challenges. See more photos are on our Flickr page. On April 6, the Clements Center and the Department of History hosted Odd Arne Westad, Elihu Professor of History at Yale, for The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History, examining historical patterns of power transition and what they suggest about the present moment. See more photos are on our Flickr page.

The series closed on April 7 with Joseph Parrott, Associate Professor of History at Ohio State and a UT Austin PhD alumnus, for Dream the Size of Freedom: How African Liberation Mobilized New Left Internationalism, co-hosted with the Department of History. Parrott examines Portuguese decolonization in Africa as a force that reshaped Western engagement with the Global South across the Cold War. See more photos are on our Flickr page.