News from
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: April 19, 1996
Contact: Mary Caffrey 609/258-5748
"From Redemption to Reaganism: American Conservatism in Historical Perspective, 1865-1980"
Former National Review publisher William Rusher to give keynote address
Princeton, N.J. -- Princeton University will host a two-day conference on the history of American Conservatism on May 3-4. The conference will feature historians and authors of diverse backgrounds and ideologies, including keynote speaker William A. Rusher, who served as publisher of the National Review from 1957 to 1988.
The conference, "From Redemption to Reaganism: American Conservatism in Historical Perspective, 1865-1980," seeks to explore how American Conservatism developed, not solely as response to liberal reforms. Conference organizers aim to find common threads seen in various strains of conservatism, such as Southern conservatism and Catholic conservatism.
Another goal is to consider the traditions of conservative philosophy in the context of the movement as it is practiced at the grassroots. The conference will seek to explore the many complex tensions within American Conservatism and move beyond the dichotomy portrayed in the media -- a hands-off fiscal philosophy alongside a social movement that asks government to restore traditional values.
Rusher will speak Friday, May 3, at 8:30 p.m. in 101 McCormick Hall. A 1944 Princeton graduate, Rusher received a law degree from Harvard and practiced on Wall Street before becoming publisher of the National Review. He is now a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, a think tank in California.
An important voice of American Conservatism for four decades, Rusher remains a frequent contributor to political discourse. In the early 1960s, he helped draft Barry Goldwater to be the Republican Party's 1964 presidential nominee. Two books, The Making of the New Majority Party (1975) and The Rise of the Right (1984) outlined the Republican Party's path to power. In recent months, he has addressed the significance of Patrick Buchanan's presidential campaign and the Republican Party's struggle to keep its various wings under its "big tent."
The conference is sponsored by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Princeton University 250th Anniversary Committee, the Office of the Dean of the Graduate School, the Council on the Humanities, the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the departments of English and History and the programs in Afro-American Studies and American Studies.
Speakers at the conference include:
Eugene Genovese, historian and author of Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made and Southern Tradition: The Achievement and Limitation of An American Conservatism.
John Patrick Diggins, CUNY Graduate Center and author of The Promise of Pragmatism: Modernism and the Crisis of Knowledge and Authority, Up From Communism and The Rise and Fall of the American Left.
E.J. Dionne, Washington Post columnist and author of Why Americans Hate Politics and They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era
Godfrey Hodgson, journalist and author of American in Our Time
Leo Ribuffo, George Washington University, author of The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right From the Great Depression to the Cold War and Right, Center, Left: Essays in American History
George Nash, author of The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 and The Life of Herbert Hoover
Nancy Maclean, Northwestern University, author of Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan
Kathleen Blee, University of Kentucky, author of Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s
Richard Gid Powers, CUNY College of Staten Island, author of Not Without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism and Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover
David Roediger, University of Minnesota, author of Towards the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on Race, Politics and Working Class History
Kevin Gaines, Princeton University, author of Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics and Culture in the Twentieth Century
Mary Brennan, Southwest Texas State University, author of Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP
A conference schedule was attached.