Welcome back America?
| 30 January, 2021 | Filled under Forthcoming Events |
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Wednesday 10 March 2021 at 7pm on Zoom
Watch discussion on You Tube
Join The Liverpool Salon on-line to discuss the outlook for Joe Biden’s presidency with Cheryl Hudson, Jacob Reynolds, Liam Kennedy and Philip Cunliffe each giving their take on the rhetoric and reality of America’s ‘return to normal’.
In his inauguration as the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden declared that ‘democracy has prevailed’ and America was ready to ‘engage with the world’, once again leading ‘by the power of our example’. The claim that Joe Biden’s administration represents a return to normal service speaks to the hope that Donald Trump represented a temporary break in transmission. But what would a ‘return to normal’ actually look like?
Beyond the rhetoric of ‘America is back’, the new administration has a long way to go to halt the decay of democracy at home, re-establish America as the leader of the world economy and repair its standing following decades of failed foreign adventures and forever wars. The ability to strike a more diplomatic tone will not mend relations with an increasingly assertive China or resolve the issues that have divided America, such as healthcare, unemployment, immigration, citizenship and voting rights.
Beneath the unifying rhetoric, might we see a return to liberal internationalism and more interventionist foreign policy? Perhaps, more authoritarian policies for dealing with ‘domestic terrorism’ to contain the threat from political opponents at home? Or does the new presidency offer an opportunity for the US to take a new direction, repair democracy at home and re-establish its standing in the world?
Speakers
Cheryl Hudson is Lecturer in US political history at the University of Liverpool. Her research focuses on the histories of race, reform and political culture in the US. She is co-editor of Ronald Reagan and the 1980s (2008) and Why Academic Freedom Matters (2016). Her book Citizenship in Chicago: Race, Culture and the Remaking of American Identity, 1890-1930 is out soon.
Philip Cunliffe is senior lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of Kent, which he joined in 2009. He has written widely on a variety of political issues ranging from Balkan politics to Brexit, with a particular focus on questions of sovereignty and international politics in the twenty-first century. He helped to found the The Full Brexit, a pro-Brexit campaigning network. His most recent books include The New Twenty Years’ Crisis: A critique of international relations 1999-2019 (2020) and Cosmopolitan Dystopia: International Intervention and the Failure of the West (2020).
Jacob Reynolds is partnerships manager at the Academy of Ideas. He was previously a consultant at a boutique strategy consultancy. Jacob read the BPhil in philosophy at St Cross College, Oxford, and developed a special interest in political philosophy and continental philosophy, especially the work of Hannah Arendt. Prior to Oxford, Jacob read politics and philosophy at the University of Sheffield, where he was part of a group of friends who ran the Sheffield Salon, modelled on the Salons of Enlightenment Europe. He spends his spare time drinking coffee, writing about literature, and arguing about philosophy.
Liam Kennedy is Director of the Clinton Institute for American Studies at University College Dublin. He has diverse research interests and teaching experiences, spanning the fields of American cultural and media studies, globalisation and Irish-US relations. He is the author or editor of nine books, including The Wire: Race, Class and Genre (2013), The Violence of the Image (2014), Afterimages: Photography and US Foreign Policy (2016), Neoliberalism and American Literature (2019), and Trump’s America (2020). Professor Kennedy is a founding editor of America Unfiltered, a media platform for commentary on contemporary American foreign policy, politics and media.
Chaired by Pauline Hadaway, co-founder, The Liverpool Salon. Pauline completed her doctoral research at the University of Manchester, examining arts and cultural development and the politics of peace building in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement. She is currently part of a team based at the University of Liverpool researching uses of art in conflict transformation. Publications include Policing the Public Gaze (2009); Re-imagining Titanic, re-imaging Belfast in Relaunching Titanic: memory and marketing in the ‘post -conflict city’ (2013) and Escaping the Panopticon, a chapter in Photography Reframed: visions in photographic culture, published by I.B. Tauris (2019). Her latest publication is Callaghan and Northern Ireland a chapter in James Callaghan: An Underrated Prime Minister, co-authored with Kevin Bean (2020).
Readings
The Crisis of American Power: How Europeans see Biden’s America, Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard, European Council on Foreign Relations
Biden takes the EU back to the future, Politico
The Rise of the Swamp Creatures, Matt Mayer, Spectator USA
Social Media Oligopolists are the new Railroad Barons, Quillette Magazine
‘America is back’: the delusion of normalcy that haunts the United States, Liam Kennedy in The Conversation, 22/01/2021
Will Kamala Harris be the first female president of the United States?, Cheryl Hudson, University of Liverpool, Department of History, Blog, 28/10/2020
Biden tells world ‘America is back’ but warns democracy under assault, Financial Times, 19/02/2021
Biden declares ‘America is back’ in welcome words to allies, Associated Press, 19/02/2021
