A Semester Full of Events

 

Dear Friends of the Politics Department,

We have much to report on what our faculty, students, and alumni have been up to during one of our most eventful semesters yet! We also have two upcoming events in April that you may find of interest.

You can learn more on our news and events page and our Instagram feed as well. As always, if you have any items to contribute to our next newsletter, please do not hesitate to send them to me (greenm@cua.edu).

Many of our events are made possible by alumni donations to the department’s Annual Fund. If you are interested in supporting the Fund or helping the department in other ways, you can learn more here. We also welcome alumni who are willing to talk to current students about job opportunities; if interested, please let me know.

Meatball hopes that everyone has a good spring, and if it rains outside, please don't forget your umbrella!

cat in an umbrella

Matthew Green
Professor and Vice Chair
Department of Politics   

Upcoming Events

Two upcoming events are being held in honor of the 250th birthday of the United States:

  • The Carroll Forum is cosponsoring the symposium “Endowed by Their Creator: Catholicism, the Declaration of Independence, and the American Experiment at 250” on Thursday, April 9. Among the invited panelists are Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who will be the keynote speaker. Registration information can be found here.
  • On Monday, April 20 at 4pm, the politics department is sponsoring an event entitled “Politics for Good,” which will honor the donation of an historic letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the University from politics alumnus Robert P. Duckworth. The event will take place in Heritage Hall, and RSVPs should be sent to greenm@cua.edu or nchako@cua.edu. 

Previous Events

Previous campus events include:

  • On October 28, the department hosted “AI and the Intelligence Community,” a talk by Lt. Col. Paul Lushenko about his research on AI and trust, bias, generational gaps, and dehumanization.
  • On November 20, the Carroll Forum hosted a talk by Yuval Levin entitled “Whose Safety and Happiness? Majority Rule and the Protection of Rights.”

Yuval Levin

  • In the fall, Carroll Fellows took a field trip to Mount Vernon, which included laying a wreath on President George Washington's tomb.

Mount Vernon 

  • In December the department cosponsored “AI, Emerging Tech, and Geopolitics: Brace for Impact,” a panel moderated by Professor Michael Promisel and featuring Dr. Victory McCrary, Vice Provost for National Security Innovation, and Ambassador Ramon Blecua, Spanish diplomat and former EU Ambassador to Iraq.

AI Panel

  • On January 22, the department cohosted a panel to discuss U.S. efforts to combat human trafficking, which included Anti Human Trafficking Ambassadors from the Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump administrations.
  • For President’s Day week, the department hosted a trivia contest on presidents for undergraduate students. (Quick: which U.S. presidents graduated from universities that also made an appearance in at least one Orange Bowl?)
  • The department sponsored several sessions for undergraduates on finding employment after college, including “How Can A.I. Help You Find a Job in Politics?” on March 3 and “Careers in Government: Finding a Job” on March 24, as well as a workshop on finding politics-related internships on March 25.
  • The department cosponsored a campus debate on March 18 hosted by Braver Angels and centered around the question, “Should ICE Be Abolished?”

ICE Debate

Our Faculty 

  • Matthew Green gave the department’s inaugural President’s Day talk, which was entitled “The Imperious Executive: Lessons from the Current Trump Presidency.”
  • Jakub Grygiel published “‘Operation Absolute Resolve’ and Just War Tradition” in the journal Public Discourse authored an op-ed in the Washington Post with the (provocative) title “Your salted caramel mocha latte is destroying society.”
  • Sarah Gustafson participated in a January panel at the American Enterprise Institute for an event titled "Parental Rights in Education after Mahmoud v. Taylor: Legal and Cultural Assessments."
  • Justin Litke published "The (Catholic?) Soul of the (American) Republic: Aristotle, Cicero, and Charles Carroll on the Proper Seat of Virtue" in Political Science Reviewer. 
  • Maryann Cusimano Love was this year’s recipient of the University’s Lucy Cohen Award for Excellence in Mission. She also spoke at a November conference entitled “Corporate Social Responsibility of Big Tech."

 Love award

Dr. Love (second from right) pictured with Dean Warshaw and other faculty award recipients. Photo by Richard Love.

  • Gustavo Santos gave a talk on subsidiarity at the Faithful Citizenship Institute's Catholic Social Teaching certificate program, participated on a panel discussion entitled “The U.S. in Venezuela: Power, Politics, and Hemispheric Affairs,” and co-led a group of students in Brazil in a program of lectures and visits called "Academy of the Americas."
  • David Walsh attended the annual meeting of the Eric Voegelin Geselleschaft to deliver a paper entitled “The Sacrum Imperium as the Empire of the Person.” He spoke on the fragility of liberal democracy in a podcast in November.
  • Andrew Yeo was quoted in The Washington Post about a possible death penalty sentence for former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol, and in the Economist to discuss ongoing tech trade disputes in U.S.-South Korea relations. He also participated in a fireside chat at the University of Texas LBJ School on Trade, Technology, and Security.

  • Justin Litke, Michael Promisel, and Gustavo Santos all published articles in a special issue of the Political Science Reviewer on Christian political thought.

Student and Alumni Achievements

  • Doctoral student Shawn Benson was selected to present a paper on Artificial Intelligence at the Angelicum in Rome in March.
  • Stephanie Menendez, along with Professor Matthew Green, presented a paper at the Northeast Political Science Association in Philadelphia on the influence of roll call voting on the reelection of congressional incumbents.
  • Ph.D. alumnus Micah Harris published “Emiles and Sophies: How Noah Webster Educated America’s Youth Like Characters from Rousseau” in History of Political Thought.