PUBLIC LECTURE: �American Politics in late 20th Century America: From the Liberal Consensus to the Conservative Consensus to No Consensus�

Abstract: In this lecture, Professor Chafe will trace the evolution of the “liberal consensus” that constituted the paradigm for American political discourse from 1948-1968, its replacement by the “conservative consensus” that dominated America from the presidency of Richard Nixon through the presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush, and then the development of polarization and an absence of consensus that has prevailed from the end of the Cold War to the present. Among the issues to be discussed are the rise of the new right, the role of terrorism in today's politics, and the prospects for movement toward a new consensus.

Biographical Note: William H. Chafe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1942. He was raised in Cambridge, attended the public schools there, and then went to Harvard College, where he graduated magna cum laude in history in 1962. After a year at Union Theological Seminary in New York, he taught for two years at Columbia Grammar School, a private preparatory school in New York City. Starting in 1965, he was a student in the graduate program in American history at Columbia University where he received his Ph.D. in 1971. He taught for one year at Vassar College, and then in 1971 began his career at Duke University.

Much of Chafe's professional scholarship reflects his long-term interest in issue of race and gender equality. His dissertation and first book focused on the changing social and economic roles of American women in the fifty years after the woman suffrage amendment. Subsequent books compared the patterns of race and gender discrimination in America. His book on the origins of the sit-in movement in North Carolina helped to re-orient scholarship on civil rights toward social history and community studies. Chafe has written two books on the history of post-World War II America, and a biography of the liberal crusader Allard Lowenstein. The author of eight books overall, he has received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award (1981) for Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina and the Black Struggle for Freedom (1980) and the Sidney Hillman book award (1994) for Never Stop Running: Allard Lowenstein and the Struggle to Save American Liberalism (1993).

Professor Chafe's activities at Duke have also reflected these interests. He has been co-director of the Duke Oral History Program, and its Center for the Study of Civil Rights and Race Relations; he is a founder and the former Academic Director of the Duke-UNC Center for Research on Women; he is also a founder and senior research associate of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. In 1988 he was named the Alice Mary Baldwin Distinguished Professor of History. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavior Sciences. From 1990 to 1995 Chafe chaired the Duke University Department of History. In 1995 he became Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and has most recently been appointed Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education.

ALL WELCOME. NO RESERVATION IS REQUIRED