Richard H. Kohn to Give 2008 E. M. Adams Lecture in the Humanities and Human Values

4:00 p.m. Sunday, October 19, 2008 UNC-Chapel Hill School of Social Work Auditorium

Richard H. Kohn of the Department of History and the Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense at UNC Chapel Hill will give the 2008 E. Maynard Adams Lecture in the Humanities and Human Values at 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 19, 2008, in the auditorium of the School of Social Work on the UNC campus. Professor Kohn’s topic will be “On Presidential War Leadership, Then and Now.”

The Adams Lecture is free of charge and open to the public. After the lecture, there will be a reception and dinner at the Carolina Inn in honor of Professor Kohn. Please call the Humanities Program at 919-962-1544 to register for the dinner.

Professor Kohn will offer a preliminary analysis of the war leadership of President George W. Bush against the backdrop of American history. The Constitution makes the President Commander in Chief of the armed forces and obligates him or her to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." The framers clearly intended (and presidents beginning with George Washington understood) that with the office came the responsibility to protect the nation's security and to wage and conduct its wars. Some fifteen presidents through the end of the Cold War have served in wartime, facing difficult and complex dilemmas: taking the nation into (or trying to avoid) war; defining the nature of the conflict; formulating and implementing strategies for victory, including working with military leaders; overseeing the mobilization of military forces, the economy, and public opinion; dealing with domestic dissent, Congress, and allied nations; and envisioning and then constructing an ending that meets needs, interests, and desires of the American people. What can be said at this moment, before the end of his administration and the availability of the documentary evidence, of George W. Bush on the subject of presidential war leadership?

Richard H. Kohn is Professor of History and Adjunct Professor of Peace, War, and Defense at UNC Chapel Hill. He was educated at Harvard and the University of Wisconsin, and has taught at CCNY, Rutgers, and (as a visiting professor) Dickinson and the Army and National war colleges. From 1981 to 1991 he was Chief of Air Force History for the US Air Force. He is the author of Eagle and Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783-1802 and the co-author, editor, or co-editor of several other volumes on American military history and contemporary civil-military relations, including The United States Military under the Constitution of the United States, 1789-1989, The Exclusion of Black Soldiers from the Medal of Honor in World War II: The Study Commissioned by the United States Army to Investigate Racial Bias in the Awarding of the Nation’s Highest Military Decoration, and Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security.