Podcasts about defense intellectual

Shadi has been curious about whether he has diverged from the left since Bernie Sanders' campaign, so he invited the socialist thinker Daniel Bessner onto the podcast this week for a spirited discussion of first principles. Bessner is one of the most influential and important leftist intellectuals writing on foreign policy today. He is the Joff Hanauer Honors Professor in Western Civilization at the University of Washington and the author of Democracy in Exile.   What followed was perhaps the most contentious episode in Wisdom of Crowds history. Of course, here at the podcast, we see deep difference as a feature and not a bug, so we hope you'll see this as an example of what spirited but civil disagreement might look like in practice. The fundamental question we wanted to ask was whether American hegemony has, on balance, been "good" or "bad" for the world.   This is a question about a world that seems to have been lost. The unipolar moment is quickly coming to an end—that is, if it isn't already gone. Daniel argues that the decline in American power is both an inescapable reality and a net positive for the world. Shadi and Damir both disagree, but for quite different reasons.   In Part 2 of our conversation, available here for subscribers, the guys dive even deeper into their disagreements over America's role in the world. If the status quo is anything but ideal, what exactly are the alternatives—and are those alternatives plausible?   Damir, looking to press Daniel, suggests that the socialist vision for how the world will improve with an inward-facing Socialist America leaves too many questions unanswered. Shadi bristled at the suggestion of decreasing America's military footprint at the exact time when Russia and China are becoming increasingly aggressive. All the while, Daniel rejects the premise that it's in our interest to militarily aid Ukraine and would prefer that the U.S. take care of its own people and address its own moral disasters instead of pushing its pretend values on the world.   Subscribe here for access to Part 2.   Required Reading   Daniel Bessner's podcast, "American Prestige"   Daniel's recent appearance on Glenn Loury's podcast   Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual, by Daniel Bessner (Amazon)   "The American Empire and Existential Enemies" by Daniel Bessner (Foreign Exchanges)   "There Are Many Things Worse Than American Power" by Shadi Hamid (Atlantic)   "Are We The Good Guys? A Debate with Glenn Greenwald" (Wisdom of Crowds)   The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (Amazon)

In this episode, Aaron is joined by Daniel Bessner to discuss propaganda in the USA. Bessner is co-host of the American Prestige podcast and a professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a Contributing Editor at Jacobin. In 2019-2020, he served as a foreign policy advisor to Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign. Daniel is an intellectual historian of U.S. foreign relations and  the author of Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual. After the interview, this episode also features a discussion on materialism, ideology, and propaganda with Our Man in Boston, Ben Howard! Special thanks to Casey Moore for the episode art and Dana Chavarria for the sound engineering!   Music: "This Nation" by Mock Orange

How do we balance the importance of individual human agency with our understanding of larger socio-economic structures? How do we explore crucial “what ifs” in history? How do we make this stuff accessible to a wider audience? These are the questions central to Daniel Bessner and Matt Christman's new podcast mini-series “Hinge Points”. In this conversation we talk historical turning points, history podcasting, and Marx. Indeed, the conversation seemed to be guided by the famous line from “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon”: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” The same could be said for history podcasts. “Hinge Points” can be found on the “Chapo Trap House” Patreon page and other podcast sites. Matt Christman is best known for his work on “Chapo Trap House”, a political humor podcast. He also posts almost daily vlogs where he reflects on history. He co-authored the Chapo Guide to Revolution with his fellow Chapo Trap House hosts. Matt and I chatted about that book previously on the New Books Network. Daniel Bessner, an intellectual historian of U.S. foreign relations, is the author of Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Cornell, 2018) and co-editor, with Nicolas Guilhot, of The Decisionist Imagination: Sovereignty, Social Science, and Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Berghahn, 2019). He currently holds the Joff Hanauer Honors Professorship in Western Civilization at the University of Washington. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a Contributing Editor at Jacobin. In 2019-2020, he served as a foreign policy advisor to Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign. In addition to his scholarly articles, he has published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and other venues. Daniel Bessner also co-hosts the “American Prestige” podcast with Derek Davison. Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he's not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

How do we balance the importance of individual human agency with our understanding of larger socio-economic structures? How do we explore crucial “what ifs” in history? How do we make this stuff accessible to a wider audience? These are the questions central to Daniel Bessner and Matt Christman's new podcast mini-series “Hinge Points”. In this conversation we talk historical turning points, history podcasting, and Marx. Indeed, the conversation seemed to be guided by the famous line from “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon”: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” The same could be said for history podcasts. “Hinge Points” can be found on the “Chapo Trap House” Patreon page and other podcast sites. Matt Christman is best known for his work on “Chapo Trap House”, a political humor podcast. He also posts almost daily vlogs where he reflects on history. He co-authored the Chapo Guide to Revolution with his fellow Chapo Trap House hosts. Matt and I chatted about that book previously on the New Books Network. Daniel Bessner, an intellectual historian of U.S. foreign relations, is the author of Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Cornell, 2018) and co-editor, with Nicolas Guilhot, of The Decisionist Imagination: Sovereignty, Social Science, and Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Berghahn, 2019). He currently holds the Joff Hanauer Honors Professorship in Western Civilization at the University of Washington. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a Contributing Editor at Jacobin. In 2019-2020, he served as a foreign policy advisor to Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign. In addition to his scholarly articles, he has published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and other venues. Daniel Bessner also co-hosts the “American Prestige” podcast with Derek Davison. Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he's not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/digital-humanities

How do we balance the importance of individual human agency with our understanding of larger socio-economic structures? How do we explore crucial “what ifs” in history? How do we make this stuff accessible to a wider audience? These are the questions central to Daniel Bessner and Matt Christman's new podcast mini-series “Hinge Points”. In this conversation we talk historical turning points, history podcasting, and Marx. Indeed, the conversation seemed to be guided by the famous line from “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon”: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” The same could be said for history podcasts. “Hinge Points” can be found on the “Chapo Trap House” Patreon page and other podcast sites. Matt Christman is best known for his work on “Chapo Trap House”, a political humor podcast. He also posts almost daily vlogs where he reflects on history. He co-authored the Chapo Guide to Revolution with his fellow Chapo Trap House hosts. Matt and I chatted about that book previously on the New Books Network. Daniel Bessner, an intellectual historian of U.S. foreign relations, is the author of Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Cornell, 2018) and co-editor, with Nicolas Guilhot, of The Decisionist Imagination: Sovereignty, Social Science, and Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Berghahn, 2019). He currently holds the Joff Hanauer Honors Professorship in Western Civilization at the University of Washington. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a Contributing Editor at Jacobin. In 2019-2020, he served as a foreign policy advisor to Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign. In addition to his scholarly articles, he has published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and other venues. Daniel Bessner also co-hosts the “American Prestige” podcast with Derek Davison. Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he's not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

How do we balance the importance of individual human agency with our understanding of larger socio-economic structures? How do we explore crucial “what ifs” in history? How do we make this stuff accessible to a wider audience? These are the questions central to Daniel Bessner and Matt Christman's new podcast mini-series “Hinge Points”. In this conversation we talk historical turning points, history podcasting, and Marx. Indeed, the conversation seemed to be guided by the famous line from “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon”: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” The same could be said for history podcasts. “Hinge Points” can be found on the “Chapo Trap House” Patreon page and other podcast sites. Matt Christman is best known for his work on “Chapo Trap House”, a political humor podcast. He also posts almost daily vlogs where he reflects on history. He co-authored the Chapo Guide to Revolution with his fellow Chapo Trap House hosts. Matt and I chatted about that book previously on the New Books Network. Daniel Bessner, an intellectual historian of U.S. foreign relations, is the author of Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Cornell, 2018) and co-editor, with Nicolas Guilhot, of The Decisionist Imagination: Sovereignty, Social Science, and Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Berghahn, 2019). He currently holds the Joff Hanauer Honors Professorship in Western Civilization at the University of Washington. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a Contributing Editor at Jacobin. In 2019-2020, he served as a foreign policy advisor to Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign. In addition to his scholarly articles, he has published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and other venues. Daniel Bessner also co-hosts the “American Prestige” podcast with Derek Davison. Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he's not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

How do we balance the importance of individual human agency with our understanding of larger socio-economic structures? How do we explore crucial “what ifs” in history? How do we make this stuff accessible to a wider audience? These are the questions central to Daniel Bessner and Matt Christman's new podcast mini-series “Hinge Points”. In this conversation we talk historical turning points, history podcasting, and Marx. Indeed, the conversation seemed to be guided by the famous line from “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon”: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” The same could be said for history podcasts. “Hinge Points” can be found on the “Chapo Trap House” Patreon page and other podcast sites. Matt Christman is best known for his work on “Chapo Trap House”, a political humor podcast. He also posts almost daily vlogs where he reflects on history. He co-authored the Chapo Guide to Revolution with his fellow Chapo Trap House hosts. Matt and I chatted about that book previously on the New Books Network. Daniel Bessner, an intellectual historian of U.S. foreign relations, is the author of Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Cornell, 2018) and co-editor, with Nicolas Guilhot, of The Decisionist Imagination: Sovereignty, Social Science, and Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Berghahn, 2019). He currently holds the Joff Hanauer Honors Professorship in Western Civilization at the University of Washington. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a Contributing Editor at Jacobin. In 2019-2020, he served as a foreign policy advisor to Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign. In addition to his scholarly articles, he has published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and other venues. Daniel Bessner also co-hosts the “American Prestige” podcast with Derek Davison. Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he's not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Is Trump a fascist? Has he unleashed fascism? Was July 6 a coup? A failed coup? Never going to be a coup? Do these labels matter? To answer that question, Katie will chat with an amazing round table consisting of: philosopher Jason Stanley; historian and law professor Samuel Moyn; political scientist Jodi Dean; historian Daniel Bessner; and journalist Eugene Puryear. Jason Stanley (https://twitter.com/jasonintrator) is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University whose latest book is "How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them." He's a contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Review, The Guardian, Project Syndicate and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Jodi Dean (https://twitter.com/Jodi7768) is a political theorist who teaches political, feminist, and media theory in Geneva, New York. She has written or edited thirteen books, including The Communist Horizon, Crowds and Party, Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging. Samuel Moyn (https://twitter.com/samuelmoyn), is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at and Professor of History at Yale University. His latest books are "Christian Human Rights" and "Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World." Daniel Bessner is a historian, non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Contributing Editor at Jacobin, and the author of "Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual" and is co-editor of "The Decisionist Imagination: Sovereignty, Social Science, and Democracy in the 20th century" Eugene Puryear (https://twitter.com/EugenePuryear) is the host for Break Through News (https://twitter.com/btnewsroom) and The Punchout podcast; a member of the PSL Party For Socialism and Liberation (https://twitter.com/pslweb) and the author of "Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America."

When trying to isolate state policy and priorities, it's impossible to disentangle the relationship between official institutions like the U.S.' Department of State or Defense from think tanks such as the RAND Institute, Brookings, or Carnegie Endowment. If a politician wants to justify starting a war or identify a danger to the national interest, he or she will often rely on think tank reports and their employed staff to bolster this assessment. I'm speaking today with Daniel Bessner, who is the Joff Hanauer Honors Associate Professor in Western Civilization at the University of Washington. An historian on the defense intellectual complex and its relationship to power and democracy, Bessner is also the author of the book Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual. In our conversation, we'll go over the relatively recent history of think tanks and the function they serve. Much of the talk will revolve around a little-known figure in this world named Hans Speier, who helped usher in the age of defense intellectuals and whose legacy, though obscure, contains valuable insights into the mind of the modern policy expert.

We were terrifyingly close to an open war on Iran recently. The near-miss was a reminder of how brazenly American imperial power is wielded around the world and how easy dragging us back into another major war would be for Trump or anyone else in his position. It also was a reminder that we don't have a real antiwar movement in this country that can fight back against these kinds of escalations. I talked about all these issues with Daniel Bessner, a historian and professor of international studies at the University of Washington, as well as the author of Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual and a forthcoming history of the RAND Corporation. He's also a regular contributor to Jacobin. Daniel's cowritten essay on democratizing US foreign policy: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2017-04-05/democratizing-us-foreign-policy Daniel's essay on the continued supremacy of the American military: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/american-us-empire-not-in-decline-superpower-trump-proves-it-is-stronger-than-ever-militarism-daniel-bessner Daniel's review of George Soros's most recent book: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/01/george-soros-defense-of-open-society-philanthropy David Klion's profile of the Quincy Institute: https://www.thenation.com/article/quincy-institute-responsible-statecraft-think-tank/

Conversation with historian Daniel Bessner who is an Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington and author of Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual. We talk about the decline in history majors, the lack of tenure track positions in History deparments and ways to change this.

Daniel Bessner is a historian with a particular focus on American foreign policy. His book Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual mixes biography with a striking analysis of Cold War policy-making. In this conversation, Bessner expands on the ideas he presented in a recent New York Times op-ed, in which he argues that the left needs a more focused and practical pathway to dismantling the American imperial project and drawing down the endless wars that have decimated globe for decades.   

Daniel Bessner is the Anne H. H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington and the author of Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual. For full show notes, go to: thaddeusrussell.com/podcast/66

Author Daniel Bessner joins us to talk about his book, Democrary in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual. Daniel Bessner is the Anne H. H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Use code 09POD to save 30% on his book when you order directly from Cornell University Press: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140104396220

Daniel Bessner's Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Cornell University Press, 2018) provides a fascinating account of Hans Speier, an oft forgotten yet highly influential figure within the mid-century national security state. Speier, a Weimar emigre intellectual, conducted propaganda for the United States in both the Second World War and the Cold War, and helped build the institutional infrastructure of the so-called military-intellectual complex. This book is more than a biography of a single person, however. It also traces the rise of a new kind of person: the defense intellectual. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Speier and other defense intellectuals, including Henry Kissinger, George Kennan, and Walt Rostow, elevated the influence of experts and even transformed the way U.S. foreign policy was made. With Speier at its center, Democracy in Exile makes critical interventions into many debates, such as the role of crises in democracy, the Cold War's origins and, perhaps most importantly for us today, the proper place of experts in society and government. (In regard to that last debate, see also Bessner and Stephen Wertheim's Foreign Affairs article “Democratizing U.S. Foreign Policy.”) Daniel Bessner is the Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Dexter Fergie is a first-year PhD student of US and global history at Northwestern University. He is currently researching the 20th century geopolitical history of information and communications networks. He can be reached by email at dexter.fergie@u.northwestern.edu or on Twitter @DexterFergie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel Bessner’s Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Cornell University Press, 2018) provides a fascinating account of Hans Speier, an oft forgotten yet highly influential figure within the mid-century national security state. Speier, a Weimar emigre intellectual, conducted propaganda for the United States in both the Second World War and the Cold War, and helped build the institutional infrastructure of the so-called military-intellectual complex. This book is more than a biography of a single person, however. It also traces the rise of a new kind of person: the defense intellectual. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Speier and other defense intellectuals, including Henry Kissinger, George Kennan, and Walt Rostow, elevated the influence of experts and even transformed the way U.S. foreign policy was made. With Speier at its center, Democracy in Exile makes critical interventions into many debates, such as the role of crises in democracy, the Cold War’s origins and, perhaps most importantly for us today, the proper place of experts in society and government. (In regard to that last debate, see also Bessner and Stephen Wertheim’s Foreign Affairs article “Democratizing U.S. Foreign Policy.”) Daniel Bessner is the Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Dexter Fergie is a first-year PhD student of US and global history at Northwestern University. He is currently researching the 20th century geopolitical history of information and communications networks. He can be reached by email at dexter.fergie@u.northwestern.edu or on Twitter @DexterFergie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel Bessner’s Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Cornell University Press, 2018) provides a fascinating account of Hans Speier, an oft forgotten yet highly influential figure within the mid-century national security state. Speier, a Weimar emigre intellectual, conducted propaganda for the United States in both the Second World War and the Cold War, and helped build the institutional infrastructure of the so-called military-intellectual complex. This book is more than a biography of a single person, however. It also traces the rise of a new kind of person: the defense intellectual. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Speier and other defense intellectuals, including Henry Kissinger, George Kennan, and Walt Rostow, elevated the influence of experts and even transformed the way U.S. foreign policy was made. With Speier at its center, Democracy in Exile makes critical interventions into many debates, such as the role of crises in democracy, the Cold War’s origins and, perhaps most importantly for us today, the proper place of experts in society and government. (In regard to that last debate, see also Bessner and Stephen Wertheim’s Foreign Affairs article “Democratizing U.S. Foreign Policy.”) Daniel Bessner is the Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Dexter Fergie is a first-year PhD student of US and global history at Northwestern University. He is currently researching the 20th century geopolitical history of information and communications networks. He can be reached by email at dexter.fergie@u.northwestern.edu or on Twitter @DexterFergie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel Bessner’s Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Cornell University Press, 2018) provides a fascinating account of Hans Speier, an oft forgotten yet highly influential figure within the mid-century national security state. Speier, a Weimar emigre intellectual, conducted propaganda for the United States in both the Second World War and the Cold War, and helped build the institutional infrastructure of the so-called military-intellectual complex. This book is more than a biography of a single person, however. It also traces the rise of a new kind of person: the defense intellectual. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Speier and other defense intellectuals, including Henry Kissinger, George Kennan, and Walt Rostow, elevated the influence of experts and even transformed the way U.S. foreign policy was made. With Speier at its center, Democracy in Exile makes critical interventions into many debates, such as the role of crises in democracy, the Cold War’s origins and, perhaps most importantly for us today, the proper place of experts in society and government. (In regard to that last debate, see also Bessner and Stephen Wertheim’s Foreign Affairs article “Democratizing U.S. Foreign Policy.”) Daniel Bessner is the Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Dexter Fergie is a first-year PhD student of US and global history at Northwestern University. He is currently researching the 20th century geopolitical history of information and communications networks. He can be reached by email at dexter.fergie@u.northwestern.edu or on Twitter @DexterFergie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel Bessner’s Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Cornell University Press, 2018) provides a fascinating account of Hans Speier, an oft forgotten yet highly influential figure within the mid-century national security state. Speier, a Weimar emigre intellectual, conducted propaganda for the United States in both the Second World War and the Cold War, and helped build the institutional infrastructure of the so-called military-intellectual complex. This book is more than a biography of a single person, however. It also traces the rise of a new kind of person: the defense intellectual. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Speier and other defense intellectuals, including Henry Kissinger, George Kennan, and Walt Rostow, elevated the influence of experts and even transformed the way U.S. foreign policy was made. With Speier at its center, Democracy in Exile makes critical interventions into many debates, such as the role of crises in democracy, the Cold War’s origins and, perhaps most importantly for us today, the proper place of experts in society and government. (In regard to that last debate, see also Bessner and Stephen Wertheim’s Foreign Affairs article “Democratizing U.S. Foreign Policy.”) Daniel Bessner is the Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Dexter Fergie is a first-year PhD student of US and global history at Northwestern University. He is currently researching the 20th century geopolitical history of information and communications networks. He can be reached by email at dexter.fergie@u.northwestern.edu or on Twitter @DexterFergie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel Bessner’s Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Cornell University Press, 2018) provides a fascinating account of Hans Speier, an oft forgotten yet highly influential figure within the mid-century national security state. Speier, a Weimar emigre intellectual, conducted propaganda for the United States in both the Second World War and the Cold War, and helped build the institutional infrastructure of the so-called military-intellectual complex. This book is more than a biography of a single person, however. It also traces the rise of a new kind of person: the defense intellectual. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Speier and other defense intellectuals, including Henry Kissinger, George Kennan, and Walt Rostow, elevated the influence of experts and even transformed the way U.S. foreign policy was made. With Speier at its center, Democracy in Exile makes critical interventions into many debates, such as the role of crises in democracy, the Cold War’s origins and, perhaps most importantly for us today, the proper place of experts in society and government. (In regard to that last debate, see also Bessner and Stephen Wertheim’s Foreign Affairs article “Democratizing U.S. Foreign Policy.”) Daniel Bessner is the Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Dexter Fergie is a first-year PhD student of US and global history at Northwestern University. He is currently researching the 20th century geopolitical history of information and communications networks. He can be reached by email at dexter.fergie@u.northwestern.edu or on Twitter @DexterFergie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel Bessner’s Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Cornell University Press, 2018) provides a fascinating account of Hans Speier, an oft forgotten yet highly influential figure within the mid-century national security state. Speier, a Weimar emigre intellectual, conducted propaganda for the United States in both the Second World War and the Cold War, and helped build the institutional infrastructure of the so-called military-intellectual complex. This book is more than a biography of a single person, however. It also traces the rise of a new kind of person: the defense intellectual. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Speier and other defense intellectuals, including Henry Kissinger, George Kennan, and Walt Rostow, elevated the influence of experts and even transformed the way U.S. foreign policy was made. With Speier at its center, Democracy in Exile makes critical interventions into many debates, such as the role of crises in democracy, the Cold War’s origins and, perhaps most importantly for us today, the proper place of experts in society and government. (In regard to that last debate, see also Bessner and Stephen Wertheim’s Foreign Affairs article “Democratizing U.S. Foreign Policy.”) Daniel Bessner is the Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Dexter Fergie is a first-year PhD student of US and global history at Northwestern University. He is currently researching the 20th century geopolitical history of information and communications networks. He can be reached by email at dexter.fergie@u.northwestern.edu or on Twitter @DexterFergie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest is Daniel Bessner. Daniel is the Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. His new book is Democracy In Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual. (https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Exile-Speier-Defense-Intellectual/dp/0801453038/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1509725358&sr=8-1&keywords=democracy+in+exile) Daniel works on intellectual and cultural history, U.S. foreign relations, the history of democratic thought, and the history of the social sciences. Daniel’s next book is provisionally entitled The RAND Corporation: A History, and is under advance contract with Princeton University Press. Finally, he is co-editing a book with Nicolas Guilhot tentatively entitled The Decisionist Imagination: Sovereignty, Social Science, and Democracy in the Twentieth Century, which is under advance contract with Berghahn Books. Daniel has published scholarly articles in several journals, including The Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences,_ International Security, The Intellectual History Review_, and others. In 2014, the International Society for Intellectual History awarded him the Charles Schmitt Prize for Best Article written by a graduate student or scholar within two years of receiving the Ph.D. for an essay on Murray Rothbard and modern libertarianism. Daniel has also published pieces in popular venues, including The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and n+1, among others. Special Guest: Daniel Bessner.

Daniel Bessner is a professor and writer whose work explores 20th century American cultural and intellectual history. In this conversation, we talk about his book Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual, his current research into the archives of the RAND Corporation, and his ideas about how intellectuals and academics might fit into a wider left project.   

Support the show and get double the episodes by subscribing to bonus episodes for $5/month at patreon.com/champagnesharks.  If you can’t subscribe right now for whatever reason, do the next best thing and tell as many people as you know about the show. Also, remember to review and rate the podcast in Itunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/champ…d1242690393?mt=2. Also, check out the Champagne Sharks reddit at http://reddit.com/r/champagnesharks. Today we have on Daniel Bessner (https://twitter.com/dbessner) to discuss his new book, Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual http://amzn.to/2Gx9q0j, which will be available in April 2018 and is available for pre-order on Amazon.  Daniel Bessner (Ph.D., Duke University) is the Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Daniel works on intellectual and cultural history, U.S. foreign relations, the history of democratic thought, and the history of the social sciences. The book is descrbed by the publisher as follows: "Anyone interested in the history of U.S. foreign relations, Cold War history, and twentieth century intellectual history will find this impressive biography of Hans Speier, one of the most influential figures in American defense circles of the twentieth century, a must-read. In Democracy in Exile, Daniel Bessner shows how the experience of the Weimar Republic’s collapse and the rise of Nazism informed Hans Speier’s work as an American policymaker and institution builder. Bessner delves into Speier’s intellectual development, illuminating the ideological origins of the expert-centered approach to foreign policymaking and revealing the European roots of Cold War liberalism. Democracy in Exile places Speier at the center of the influential and fascinating transatlantic network of policymakers, many of them German émigrés, who struggled with the tension between elite expertise and democratic politics. Speier was one of the most prominent intellectuals among this cohort, and Bessner traces his career, in which he advanced from university intellectual to state expert, holding a key position at the RAND Corporation and serving as a powerful consultant to the State Department and Ford Foundation, across the mid-twentieth century. Bessner depicts the critical role Speier played in the shift in American intellectual history in which hundreds of social scientists left their universities and contributed to the creation of an expert-based approach to U.S. foreign relations, in the process establishing close connections between governmental and nongovernmental organizations. As Bessner writes: to understand the rise of the defense intellectual, we must understand Hans Speier." Discussed in this episode: "On the Brink" by Daniel Bessner, a book review of Daniel Ellsberg's biography https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/on-the-brink/