Patrick Chamorel, Ph.D. – Senior Resident Scholar, Stanford University Center in Washington, DC

Dear Colleagues:

Throughout our history, the U.S. has been defined in part in opposition to Europe. But Europeans, accustomed to a different world, could see things in the United States that Americans might not. Long before the Civil War, Tocqueville’s Democracy in America highlighted the implications of American social equality (and its limits), and protestant religiosity. James Bryce’s The American Commonwealth is the classic work on American government in the late 19th century. Both they and subsequent scholars wondered not just how the U.S. functioned but what that implied for Europe. That question became even more crucial after World War II created American hegemony, and in response Jean-Jacques Servan Schreiber in 1967 wrote about The American Challenge. Part of the European response to that economic and social “challenge” – and to Europe’s history of deadly nationalisms – was to create a version of the U.S. – the EU (though with more powerful states and bureaucrats).

The Trump administration has Europeans puzzling over the future of the U.S. as a partner, as leaders like Angela Merkel decide Europe can no longer rely on U.S. protection. But other issues are being revisited, such as how the U.S. economic model compares to others, and what Trump’s populism suggests about American political institutions and stability. Is the U.S. now more familiar, so less instructive? Dr. Chamorel will offer perspective and provoke discussion.

All best regards,
Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies

About Our Guest

Patrick Chamorel is Senior Resident Scholar at the Stanford University Center in Washington DC. He teaches Political Science, with an emphasis on comparative American and European politics, public policy and political economy, as well as transatlantic relations. He has taught Transatlantic Relations on Stanford’s California campus as well as French Politics at the Stanford in Paris campus. Over the last few years, he has been teaching a semester course and an intensive seminar at the Reims Euro-American campus of Sciences-Po Paris. In addition to Stanford, he has taught at the University of California (Berkeley and Santa Cruz), George Washington University, and Claremont McKenna College where he was the Crown Visiting professor of Government (2002-2005). He was a Fellow of the Institute for Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley, the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC and the Hoover Institution at Stanford, as well as a Congressional Fellow of the American Political Science Association (Offices of Harry Reid in the U.S. Senate and Norman Mineta in the House of Representatives).

Where We Meet

The Friday Public Affairs Lunch convenes each Friday when classes are in session, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Our programs are open to all and no registration is required. This week we meet in Guilford House, the yellow building with a nice porch at 11112 Bellflower Road, just east of the Tinkham Veale University Center. The main entrance of Guilford faces east, towards the fountain that almost never is running, and the talk will be next to the entry hall. During most other weeks we will meet in the Dampeer Room of Kelvin Smith Library; the room will always be announced in these e-mails and on our website.

Parking Possibilities

Guilford House is part of the “Mather Quad” and the logical parking options are those with the best access to that part of campus. These include on-street parking on Bellflower or East Boulevard; the underground garage next to Severance Hall; the surface lot on the Euclid Avenue side of the Church of the Covenant; and the Ford Road parking structure, on Ford Road between Euclid and Bellflower. We regret that there is no free parking.

Schedule of Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:

March 8: Victims, Perpetrators, and the Problem of Domestic Violence. With Laura Voith, Assistant Professor, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences.

March 15: No Discussion, Spring Break

March 22: Germany’s New Party Politics? With Andreas Sobisch, Associate Professor of Political Science, John Carroll University.

March 29: Punishment Beyond Prison: The Effects of Collateral Sanctions. With Michael Shields, Researcher, Policy Matters Ohio.

April 5: Budget Blues: Yes, It Can Get Worse. With Joe White, Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy.

April 12: The Polar Silk Road? With Kathryn C. Lavelle, Ellen and Dixon Long Professor of World Affairs.

April 19: Managing in a Trumped-Up Economy. With Mark Sniderman, Executive-in-Residence and Adjunct Professor of Economics, Weatherhead School, and former Executive Vice President and Chief Policy Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

April 26: What Do We Know About the Health and Safety Effects of Marijuana: Medical, Recreational, or Otherwise? With Theodore Parran Jr. MD, Isabel and Carter Wang Professor and Chair in Medical Education and Associate Director, Rosary Hall at St. Vincent Charity Medical Center.