Conference Details

 or the image below to see a summary schedule of the LaFeber Festschrift Conference.

Walter LaFeber's Last Waltz: A Night at the Beacon
Panel 1 - Extending the Sphere: The New Empire

Walt argued that from John Winthrop and John Quincy Adams to William Seward and William Howard Taft, U.S. policymakers systematically built a continental empire and laid the groundwork for overseas expansion prior to World War I.

 
Panel 2 - Reconstructing the Back Story: America, Russia, and the Cold War

In a remarkable run over four decades and ten editions, Walt updated this pathbreaking book to showcase the impact of recurring crises, rising third world nationalism, domestic politics, and the persistent nuclear arms race and managed to keep it relevant to the turbulent world that followed the Cold War.

 
Panel 3 - Thinking about Democracy: Inevitable Revolutions

As Central America became a charnel house of violence in the 1980s, Walt made a compelling case that the Reagan administration’s obsessive anticommunism was making revolution in El Salvador and elsewhere inevitable.

 

Panel 4 - Turning to Asia - The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations Through History

Walt showed that although America’s plunge into Indochina after 1945 grew out of an anticommunist alliance with Japan, U.S. and Japanese leaders soon recognized that China would inevitably emerge as the pivotal economic and political power in East Asia.  

 

Panel 5 - Demystifying Globalization: Michael Jordan & Global Capitalism

A lifelong baseball and basketball fan, Walt argued that by the end of the 20th century, sports, culture, and technology had transformed the nature of American power, highlighting the challenges of globalization.

 

Panel 6 - Confronting the Tocqueville Problem: The Deadly Bet

Walt was deeply troubled by the annus horribilis 1968-69 in Vietnam and at Cornell, which highlighted both the significance of “the Tocqueville problem” regarding the durability of American democracy and the importance of speaking truth to power.

Shapers of Post-Cold War US Foreign Policy

Moderator

Thomas Pepinsky is the Walter F. LaFeber Professor of Government and the Director of the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University.

Participants

  • Jeffrey Bialos (Cornell BA, Class of 1978) heads the Aerospace, Defense, and Security Practice at Eversheds Sutherland LLP, a global law firm based in Washington DC.
  • Robert Einhorn (Cornell BA, Class of 1969) is a senior fellow in the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative at the Strobe Talbott Center at the Brookings Institution.
  • Eric Edelman (Cornell BA, Class of 1972) has been Counselor at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments since 2009, when he retired from the US Foreign Service. 
  • Stephen Hadley (Cornell BA, Class of 1969) is a Principal at Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, an international consulting firm in Washington DC.
  • Paul Jones (Cornell BA, Class of 1982) retired from the US Department of State in 2020.  
  • Shannon Smith (Cornell PhD, Class of 1998) is Middle East and Africa Section Manager for the Congressional Research Service.

For a full bio of the moderator and participants in this round table, click here. 

Sculptors of Modern America in Law, Industry, and Finance

Moderator

Andrew Tisch (Cornell BS, Class of 1971) is Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Loews Corporation.

Participants

  • Stephen Arbogast (Cornell BA, Class of 1970) is Director of the Kenan-Flager Energy Center and Professor of Practice of Finance at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where he has taught since 2014.
  • Alison Dreizen (Cornell BA, Class of 1974) is counsel at Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP, where she focuses on cross-border transactions, mergers and acquisitions, and joint ventures.
  • LizAnn Rogovoy Eisen (Cornell BA Class of 1994) is an Acting Professor of the Practice at Cornell Law School/Cornell Tech, and a Senior Regulatory and Strategic Partner at Braven, an early-stage investment firm. 
  • David Maisel (Cornell Class of 1968) spent his career in the financial industry, where he specialized in municipal bonds.
  • Eduardo M. Peñalver (Cornell BA, Class of 1995) is President of Seattle University.
  • Peter Schuck (Cornell BA, Class of 1962) is the Simeon E. Baldwin Professor of Law Emeritus at Yale University, where he taught for thirty years, serving briefly as deputy dean of the law school.
  • C. Evan Stewart (Cornell BA, Class of 1974, JD Class of 1977) is a senior partner at Cohen and Gresser LLP in Manhattan, where he specializes in securities litigation.
  • David Zalaznick (Cornell BA, Class of 1976) Co-founding partner of The Jordan Company, and Jordan/Zalaznick Advisers Inc., two private equity firms; he currently serves as Chairman of Jordan/Zalaznick Advisers Inc. Mr. Zalaznick served as Vice Chairman of Cornell’s Board of Trustees; he is a Trustee Emeritus.

For a full bio of the moderator and participants in this round table, click here. 

Academia

Presenters

  • Susan Brewer [‘87], University of Wisconsin Stevens Point
  • Robert Hannigan [‘71], Suffolk University 
  • Frank Costigliola [‘72], University of Connecticut
  • Jeffrey A. Engel [‘95], 91ƬSϼ
  • Lorena Oropeza [‘95], UC-Berkeley
  • James Siekmeier [‘92], West Virginia University
  • Anne Foster [‘95], Indiana State University
  • Andrew Rotter [‘75], Colgate University
  • Sayuri Shimizu [‘91], Rice University
  • Jessica Wang [‘88], University of British Columbia
  • Eric Alterman [‘82], CUNY-Brooklyn College
  • Richard Immerman [‘71], Temple University