University Lecture With Professor Nicholas B. Dirks
Date: February 20, 2012 from 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm EST
Location: Rotunda, Low Memorial Library
President Lee C. Bollinger and Interim Provost John H. Coatsworth host the
University Lecture
given by
Nicholas B. Dirks
Executive Vice President for Arts and Sciences, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and History
"Scholars and Spies: Worldly Knowledge and the Predicament of the University"
At the dawn of the Second World War, the United States had neither a major intelligence capability nor a wealth of expertise about global matters in its colleges and universities. The newly formed Office of Strategic Services both organized new global ventures in research and analysis and set the intellectual context and initial institutional organization of what became postwar "area studies." This lecture reviews the history of area studies and the uncanny relationships between scholarship and espionage in the twentieth century, a history that is then used to provide a backdrop for assessing the contemporary demands of "globalization" on the structures and commitments of the university.
