On Wednesday, 4 October 2017,  Professor Justin Hart (Texas Tech University), visiting professor at the RIAS, delivered the latest installment in the ongoing Roosevelt Lecture series, on ‘The Rooseveltian Century in the Age of Trump.’

To say that President Donald J. Trump’s approach to foreign policy has been controversial is an understatement. Since the presidential election campaign of 2016, Trump’s pronouncements about America’s role in the world have often prompted shock and anger at home and abroad. Many critics have identified the Trump administration as a radical departure from the approach to foreign relations developed by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s and 40s, and has applied to a greater or lesser extent ever since. Does Trump’s foreign policy, then, mark the end of what we can identify as the ‘Rooseveltian Century’?

Professor Hart explored this question in the second installment of the Roosevelt Lectures, the main series of public lectures on US history and politics held at the RIAS. Starting with the origins of the ‘Rooseveltian’ international order constructed after WWII, Dr. Hart explored some of the distinctive elements, and criticisms, of America’s role in the world in the second half of the twentieth century.

The lecture was recorded, and you can listen to it here.