Friday February 5, 2021
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Online Zoom Meeting
Dear Colleagues:
Greetings, Happy New Year, and welcome to “Spring” Semester here in Northeast Ohio and Case Western Reserve University. I hope all recipients of this newsletter had a healthy and safe holiday season and can stay very well in this worrisome and socially-distanced time.
Social distancing continues on campus and the “Friday Lunch” will remain an online event through the semester. But our discussions seemed to do pretty well during the Fall, and I hope the mostly-completed schedule for the coming term will engage and inform.
Our opening session should certainly qualify! I’m very glad to welcome Jim Pfiffner to lead off the semester, something that the Zoom format makes possible. While lots of people can speculate about what the Biden Presidency might be like, and opine on how it’s doing so far, there are very few people in the country who can do so with Jim’s level of expertise. Professor Pfiffner is author or editor of numerous textbooks on the presidency, including six editions of The Modern Presidency, and most recently co-authored, with Steve Hess, a new edition of Hess’s classic, Organizing the Presidency. During the Trump presidency, Jim wrote some of the most careful analyses of President Trump’s unusual behavior. I have benefited immensely from his work and counsel for teaching my course on the presidency for CWRU students, and I can think of nobody who could give us a better overview of how the Biden presidency is beginning.
Signing In
This semester’s discussions will begin at 12:30 p.m., the usual time. The meeting will be set up as from Noon to 2:00 p.m., so people are not all signing in at the same time and to allow for the discussion to run a bit long. Each week we will send out this newsletter with information about the topic. It will also include a link to register (for free) for the discussion. Every Monday the same information will be posted on our website: fridaylunch.case.edu.
If you register, you will automatically receive from the Zoom system the link to join the meeting. This week’s link for registration is:
https://cwru.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMucO-orjwsG9VHIbIbVCQs_ElBUHJhQ7V7
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Please e-mail padg@case.edu if you have questions about how the Zoom version of the Friday Lunch will work or any other suggestions. Or call at 216 368-2426 and we’ll try to get back to you. We are very pleased to be partnering this semester with the Siegal Lifelong Learning Program to share information about the discussions.
Best wishes for safety and security for you and yours,
Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies
About Our Guest
James P. Pfiffner is Professor Emeritus in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. His major areas of expertise are the Presidency, American National Government, public management and the national security policy process. He has lectured on these topics at universities in Europe and throughout the United States as well as at the Federal Executive Institute, the National War College, the U.S. Military Academy, and the Departments of State, Justice, and Defense.
He has written or edited sixteen books on the presidency and American National Government, including The Strategic Presidency: Hitting the Ground Running (2nd edition, 1996), The Character Factor: How We Judge Our Presidents, (2004), Power Play: The Bush Administration and the Constitution (Brookings 2008), and Torture as Public Policy (Paradigm Publishers in 2010). He has also published more than 100 articles and chapters in books and scholarly journals.
His professional experience includes service in the Director’s Office of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (1980-81), and he has been a member of the faculty at the University of California, Riverside and California State University, Fullerton.
Schedule of Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:
February 12: A Tale of Two Republics: The End of the Roman Republic as a Cautionary Exemplum for America. With Timothy Wutrich, Ph.D., Senior Instructor, Department of Classics.
February 19: The Limits of Party, and Prospects for the 117th Congress. With Frances E. Lee, Ph.D., Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, Princeton University
February 26: Brexit Happened: Now What? With Elliot Posner, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science.
March 5: Effects of the Pandemic on Children’s Resilience and Vulnerability. With Sandra Russ, Ph.D., Distinguished University Professor and Louis D. Beaumont University Professor, Department of Psychological Sciences.
March 12: Dictatorship by Degrees: Xi Jinping in China. With Steven P. Feldman, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus in Business Ethics.
March 19: What’s the Problem With Big Tech? With Anat Alon-Beck, J.D., Assistant Professor of Law.
March 26: Student Debt: What Are the Problems? For Whom? And What Could Be Done? With Richard Kazis, Senior Consultant, MDRC, Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program, and Board Chair of The Institute for College Access and Services.
April 2: TBA
April 9: Healthcare, Public Health, and Population Health. With Scott Frank, MD, Associate Professor and Director of Public Health Initiatives, Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences.
April 16: Dropping the Pilot? Assessing Angela Merkel’s Chancellorship. With Kenneth F. Ledford, Ph.D., Chair, Department of History.
April 23: Depression’s Past and Future. With Jonathan Sadowsky, Ph.D., Theodore J. Castele Professor of History.
April 30: The Republican Party and Demographic Change. With Girma Parris, Ph.D., Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science.
May 7: Defending Disability Insurance. With Kathy Ruffing, Senior Fellow, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. |
