Prize-Winning Historian Beeman to Discuss the Leadership that Created the U.S. Constitution

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Author Richard Beeman, whose Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution won the 2010 George Washington Book Prize, will deliver the Book Prize Lecture Thursday, September 30 at Washington College. Hosted by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, which administers the Prize, the event begins at 4:15 with a book signing in the lobby of the Daniel Z. Gibson Center for the Arts. Following at 5 p.m. in Decker Theatre is a special performance of the National Constitution Center’s live multimedia program “Freedom Rising.” Beeman’s talk, “The Founding Fathers of 1787: Lessons in Political Leadership,” begins at 5:15 p.m. in the same theater.

At 9:30 a.m. the following morning, Friday, October 1, the celebration continues in Hodson Hall Commons with “Making History,” an informal public conversation between Beeman and Adam Goodheart, the Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of the C.V. Starr Center. The two historians will probe the relationship between the way the framers of the Constitution viewed the document they created and the way modern Americans approach and understand it today. They will also discuss the process of writing history and take questions from the audience. “Making History” will take place in Center Stage, on the first floor of Hodson Hall Commons. All events are free and open to the public.

“We invite all members of the Washington College community to join us in honoring Dr. Beeman’s important book and exploring the history that it recounts,” Goodheart said. “Almost 225 years after the delegates to the Constitutional Convention closed the doors of Independence Hall behind them, Plain, Honest Men opens their secret proceedings to view, casting new light on decisions that continue to shape our laws, our politics, and our national identity.”

Richard Beeman is professor of history and former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a trustee of the National Constitution Center. He has written five other books on revolutionary America, including Patrick Henry: A Biography (McGraw-Hill, 1974), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. His prize-winning Plain, Honest Men is a dramatic and engrossing account of the men who met in Philadelphia over the summer of 1787 to design a radically new form of government. In exploring the daily debates of the Constitutional Convention, Plain, Honest Men reveals the passionate intellectual and political conflicts among the Founders.

“There has been a tendency among all Americans to regard the Founding Fathers as these mythic, carved-in-marble or cast-in-bronze figures,” said Beeman. “I wanted to make them real human beings. But I wanted to make them 18^th-century human beings, not 21^st-century human beings. I think that they approached the task with a humility that would be valuable in our present-day times.”

The jury of scholars who chose Beeman’s book as a finalist from among 62 nominees described it as “the best modern account of the Constitutional story,” noting that the book’s skilled narration of an event too many consider inevitable “restores that most fragile component of history – contingency.” Plain, Honest Men has received praise from innumerable reviewers and readers, including the eminent American historian Gordon Wood, who called it “the fullest and most authoritative account of the Constitutional Convention ever written.”

For more information about the George Washington Book Prize, which is co-sponsored by Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and George Washington’s Mount Vernon, visit the Starr Center website at starrcenter.washcoll.edu, or call 410-810-7165.

Zero Hour Theatre Brings Spotswood Play "7 Lessons on Suicide" to WC Campus

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Zero Hour Theatre will present Stephen Spotswood’s dark comedy “7 Lessons on Suicide” Friday and Saturday, September 17 and 18, at Washington College. The production will be staged Friday at 9 p.m. and Saturday at 8 p.m. in Tawes Theatre of the Gibson Center for the Arts.

The play unfolds as a young man struggles to dissuade his ex-girlfriend from committing suicide. His task is complicated by four quirky acquaintances intent on ending their own lives. The show runs approximately 60 minutes and contains profanity.

The show’s director, Tess Pohlhaus ’03, says the show is very, very dark but is ultimately about choosing life. “It deals with very serious issues in a deeply comedic way and with a lot of heart. We want the audience to leave the theater with a lot to think and talk about.”

Spotswood is an award-winning playwright who earned his undergraduate degree at Washington College in 1999, and the Zero Hour troupe consists largely of W.C. theater graduates. After holding a workshop reading of the play at Washington College in the late spring, Zero Hour premiered “7 Lessons On Suicide” to good reviews at the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, D.C. this past July. DC Theatre Scene gave it four out of five stars and described it as “morbidly fascinating.” According to the Washington City Paper, “the premise is clever, and surprisingly humorous.”

Admission to the play is free and open to the public; a suggested donation of $2 is welcome. For more information, visit http://www.zerohourtheatre.com.

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PEN American Exec. Director to Remember Journalist Murray Kempton in Sept. 20 Talk

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Steven Isenberg, executive director of PEN American Center, will present a tribute to the late journalist Murray Kempton when he delivers the Harwood Lecture in American Journalism on Monday, September 20 at Washington College. The talk, titled “Another Sage of Baltimore: An Appreciation of Murray Kempton,” will take place at 4:30 p.m. in Litrenta Lecture Hall, Toll Science Center, and will be followed by a reception.

Isenberg took the helm of PEN American Center in August of 2009. The largest branch of the world’s oldest international human rights organization, PEN American Center has a membership of 3,400 writers, translators and editors. Basing its programs on the belief that free expression is an essential component of a healthy society, the Center promotes writing and literature, defends writers from persecution and opposes censorship around the world.

Earlier in his career, Isenberg worked in journalism, academia, government and law. He has been interim president of Adelphi University, publisher of New York Newsday, an executive of the Los Angeles Times and chief-of-staff to New York Mayor John Lindsay. He also has taught at numerous colleges, including the University of Texas at Austin (where he received a 2007 Teaching Excellence Award), Berkeley, Yale and Davidson.

The subject of Isenberg’s talk was a colorful character known for his sense of fairness, his intellectual curiosity and his elaborate prose. Murray Kempton grew up in Baltimore and attended Johns Hopkins University, where he was editor of the student newspaper. His 50-year career as a reporter, columnist and editor played out in New York City, starting with the New York Post and ending with Newsday, where he won a Pulitzer Prize.

Isenberg, who worked with Kempton as publisher of New York Newsday, believes the quality of the writer’s character and work is instructive today. His talk will include excerpts from Kempton’s columns and books and the principles that guided him. “My goal is that, after hearing my remembrance, anyone who has never read Murray Kempton will be curious to do so,” says Isenberg. “And those who have read him in the past will be reminded of his achievement and his meaning for today.”

The Richard Harwood Lecture Series was established in honor of the late Washington Post editor and columnist Dick Harwood, who taught and mentored student journalists at Washington College in the 1990s after moving to Chestertown. The event is free and open to the public.

Historian Striner to Read from New Book, "Lincoln's Way," Sept. 23 at Washington College

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Historian Richard Striner will read from his new book, Lincoln’s Way: How Six Great Presidents Created American Power, and discuss presidential leadership Thursday, September 23 on the Washington College campus. The reading, sponsored by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, will begin at 4:30 p.m. in the Sophie Kerr Room of the Miller Library and will be followed by a reception and book signing. Copies of the book will be available for purchase.

Published by Rowman & Littlefield, Striner’s book explores the power of the U.S. presidency to create sweeping and positive changes throughout the nation and the world. Scheduled for release on September 16, it has earned praise for combining scholarship and depth of knowledge with an engaging and clear style of writing. Blending intellectual history and presidential biography, it creates a valuable lens for viewing the present.

Striner explains how Abraham Lincoln set the stage for America’s global superpower status by using his federal authority in shrewd ways, borrowing from both ends of the political spectrum. It was a powerful, centrist way of leading that was adopted by five subsequent presidents: Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy.

These presidents denounced the idea that government was “always the answer” but did believe it was “sometimes the answer” when it came to necessities. “They believed in the value of coordinated national life—in teamwork,” Striner writes in his introduction.

Lincoln’s Way earned advance praise from two well-known fellow historians and authors, James MacGregor Burns and James M. McPherson. Burns called Lincoln’s Way “an unforgettable book” and “must reading for lovers of American History—a fresh and spirited presentation of some of our greatest leaders, with special emphasis on key ideas, presented in a broad intellectual framework.”

Noting Striner’s “remarkable range of knowledge,” McPherson wrote: “Drawing on a lifetime of scholarship, the author writes with great clarity for a general audience beyond the academy, while at the same time offering original insights that deepen and broaden our understanding of how the government promoted greater justice and equity in the American socioeconomic order during the century from the 1860s to the 1960s.”

Striner’s earlier book, Father Abraham: Lincoln’s Relentless Struggle to End Slavery, was published in 2006 by Oxford University Press. A professor of history at Washington College, he is also is a senior writer for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Committee.

For more information on the reading, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu or call the Starr Center at 410-810-7161.

Musician/Historian Ned Sublette Presents "An Evening in New Orleans" September 21

CHESTERTOWN, MD— Ned Sublette, the 2010-11 Patrick Henry Writing Fellow at Washington College, will explore the cultural heritage of New Orleans in a performance titled "Kiss You Down South: An Evening of Music and History” September 21 at 6:30 on the College campus. Combining musical performance and history in a coffee-house setting, the event will take place in Center Stage, an intimate space in Hodson Hall Commons. It will include a book signing at 6 p.m.; admission is free and open to the public.

Sublette will share stories of America’s most unique city, home to a vibrant cultural heritage that has endured in the face of crippling poverty, endemic racism, and rising floodwaters. New Orleans' history is, in many ways, best told through its music, a product of centuries of interaction between diverse groups: Africans, West Indians, Creoles, Native Americans, Cubans, Haitians, and European-Americans. Through that diversity, the city has birthed or nurtured many of America’s great musical traditions, including jazz, blues, gospel, zydeco, hip hop, funk, Cajun, and rhythm & blues.

Sublette is an internationally renowned musician and cultural historian who brings a special perspective to the study of early America. A native of Texas, he has spent most of his working life in New York City. He is the author of several well-received books, including The Year Before the Flood: A Story of New Orleans (2009) and The World that Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square (2008), both published by Lawrence Hill Books, and Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo (Chicago Review Press, 2004).

The Guardian (U.K.) has called his writing “astonishing work that explains much about our modern world,” and the Boston Globe has lauded The World That Made New Orleans as “an energetic and fascinating read … the best argument yet for why we need to save New Orleans.”

The Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship, provided by Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and supported by the Rose O’Neill Literary House (the College’s center for literature and creative writing), offers a yearlong residency to authors doing innovative work on America’s founding era and its legacy. It is permanently endowed as part of a $2.5 million challenge grant package that the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded through its nationwide “We the People” initiative.

Sublette will use his residence at Washington College to continue work on a history of the American “slave coast” and the vast but little-known black migrations that shaped American history and culture from the 18th century to the present. Adam Goodheart, Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of the C.V. Starr Center, describes Sublette’s approach as “groundbreaking,” and explains that, “while several excellent monographs have chronicled the role of specific mid-Atlantic port cities in the oceangoing domestic slave trade, none have explored the region as a whole as a ‘slave coast,’ similar in character and function, if not in scale, to the West African coast.”

As part of the fellowship, Sublette and his wife, the writer Constance Ash, are living in a restored 1735 house in the heart of Chestertown's colonial historic district. Sublette will co-teach a course at Washington College in the spring.

He is a previous recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University. He is also a classically trained guitarist and a songwriter. His albums as composer and vocalist include Cowboy Rumba, Monsters from the Deep and the forthcoming Kiss You Down South. He has been a producer for Public Radio International’s Afropop Worldwide, co-founding that program’s scholarly Hip Deep series, and was co-founder of the record label Qbadisc, which distributed Cuban music in the United States.

About the C.V. Starr Center

The C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience explores our nation’s history – and particularly the legacy of its Founding era – in innovative ways. Through educational programs, scholarship, and public outreach, and especially by supporting and fostering the art of written history, the Starr Center seeks to bridge the divide between past and present, and between the academic world and the public at large. From its base in the circa-1746 Custom House along Chestertown’s colonial waterfront, the Center also serves as a portal onto a world of opportunities for Washington College students

photo credit: Constance Ash

Novelist Colum McCann to Visit Campus Sept. 16

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Novelist Colum McCann leads off the 2010/11 Sophie Kerr lecture series at Washington College on Thursday, September 16 at 5 p.m. in Tawes Theater, the Daniel Z. Gibson Center for the Arts.

A native of Ireland who now teaches at Hunter College in New York, McCann is the author of five novels and has been published in 30 languages. His most recent book, Let the Great World Spin (Random House, 2009), was praised by the New York Times as “an emotional tour de force” and became one of the most talked about books of the decade. Set in New York City in the 1970s, it has been described as an allegory of the city's resilient post-9/11 self.

The novel begins in August 1974 as tightrope walker Philippe Petit makes his way through the dawn light across the World Trade Center towers, committing the “artistic crime of the century” and stunning thousands of watchers below. Using the true story of Petit as a pull-through metaphor, McCann crafts a portrait of the city and a people, weaving together seemingly disparate lives.

Let the Great World Spin won the National Book Award and was chosen as Amazon's top Book of the Year. It placed McCann—whose remarkable previous books include Zoli and Dancer—at the very top rank of contemporary novelists.

Born in Dublin in 1965, McCann was named Esquire's Writer of the Year in 2003 and was awarded a prestigious French Chevalier des arts et lettres in 2009. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review and The Irish Times.

Sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee, McCann’s reading is free and open to the public. For more information on the author, visit www.colummccann.com. To learn about other literary events at Washington College, please visit www.washcoll.edu.

New E-book by Mitchell Reiss Explores When and How to Talk to Terrorists

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A new book by Washington College president Mitchell B. Reiss has answers for two of the most pressing questions facing America’s leaders today: Should we ever talk to terrorists? And if we do, how should we conduct the negotiations in order to achieve our goals?

In Negotiating with Evil: When to Talk to Terrorists,” to be released September 7 as an original e-book by Open Road Integrated Media, Reiss draws in part on his own experiences as a high-level negotiator in two diplomatic hot spots: Northern Ireland and North Korea. He also shares lessons from dozens of other major players in the realms of foreign policy and terrorism, including General David Petraeus, Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, former leaders of the Basque terrorist group ETA, and the Director General of the British intelligence agency MI5.

“Over the past three years, I’ve traveled around the world interviewing prime ministers, generals, intelligence officers and former terrorists,” says Reiss, the scholar and diplomat who took office as President of Washington College on July 1 of this year. “My goal has been to explore why and when governments have decided to talk to terrorist groups, understand the mistakes they’ve made and reveal the victories they’ve achieved.”

In addition to adding insights on an especially timely topic, Reiss’s book is making news with its format. Negotiating with Evil will be the first “E-Riginal” issued by Open Road, a new digital publishing group founded by former HarperCollins executive Jane Friedman and movie producer Jeffrey Sharp (Boys Don’t Cry and You Can Count on Me). It will forge new ground as a book that will come out electronically, to be downloaded onto iPads, Kindles and other e-readers, and in print.

Reiss chose to publish with Open Road because of its trailblazing nature. “Digital publishing is the way of the future,” he says. “Working with Open Road brings three immediate advantages: the book gets out very quickly, it's far less expensive than a traditional book, and it’s a great way to reach a global audience.”

Negotiating with Evil looks at the complex political, military and ethical choices of five governments, gauges how they’ve fared and provides guidelines for the future. “These lessons are invaluable as America and other democracies will increasingly be confronted with similar choices: when to settle differences with terrorist groups by fighting or by talking,” says Reiss.

Senator John McCain praises Negotiating with Evil as “deeply relevant” and “required reading" for informed citizens and senior policymakers alike. "Peace is not made between friends,” says McCain. “It is made between enemies. How political leaders start talking with groups or governments that are fighting and killing their citizens, and ultimately agree to end their conflicts, is one of the most difficult, most important and least understood challenges facing nations across the world. Mitchell Reiss has done a great service by drawing out the lessons of past efforts by governments to make peace with their enemies—from Northern Ireland to Sri Lanka to Al Anbar, Iraq.”

Journalist and historian Walter Isaacson also recommends the book. “The distinguished diplomat and scholar Mitchell Reiss takes on one of the most important questions of our messy international age, how to deal with terrorists, and he answers it through a series of fascinating case studies,” says Isaacson. “It’s both an important study and also a compelling set of historical narratives.”

Mitchell Reiss brought decades of experience in international affairs to the task of writing the book. He is internationally recognized for his negotiating skills during the Northern Ireland peace process and the North Korean nuclear crisis. Prior to assuming the presidency of Washington College, he was Diplomat-in-Residence at the College of William & Mary, where he also taught law and government and served as Vice Provost for International Affairs and Director of the Wendy and Emery Reves Center for International Studies.

From 2003 to 2005, Reiss served as Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department, where he provided Secretary Colin L. Powell with independent strategic advice and policy recommendations. From December 2004 through February 2007, he was the President's Special Envoy for the Northern Ireland Peace Process with the rank of Ambassador. The historic progress made towards ending “the Troubles” earned him the State Department's Foreign Affairs Award for Public Service.

In 1999, prior to joining William & Mary, Reiss helped manage the start-up and operations of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), a multinational organization designed to deliver $6 billion of energy (500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil/year and two 1,000 MW nuclear power stations) to North Korea. He led KEDO's negotiations with the North Koreans and served as its first General Counsel.

Reiss was a Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where he started its nonproliferation and counter-proliferation programs. He also has practiced corporate and banking law at Covington & Burling and, in 1988-89, served as Special Assistant to the National Security Advisor while a White House Fellow. He holds a law degree from Columbia Law School, a D.Phil. from Oxford University, a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy and a B.A. from Williams College. He has written two previous books on international security—Bridled Ambition: Why Countries Constrain Their Nuclear Capabilities, and Without the Bomb: The Politics of Nuclear Nonproliferation—contributed to 18 other books, and published more than 80 articles and reviews.

Beginning Tuesday, September 7, Negotiating with Evil can be ordered from www.openroadmedia.com.

Related links:
Washington College introduces Mitchell Reiss: http://www.washcoll.edu/mbr.php
Mitchell Reiss Author Page: http://www.openroadmedia.com/author_reiss.html
Negotiating with Evil fan page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Negotiating-With-Evil-When-to-Talk-to-Terrorists-by-Mitchell-Reiss/148456811850085?ref=ts