Fukuyama

Celebrated public intellectual Francis Fukuyama ’74 will reflect on the 25th anniversary of his landmark essay, “The End of History,” at a sesquicentennial event titled “Will Democracy Have Competitors in the 21st Century?” Nov. 18 at 5 p.m. in Schwartz Auditorium, Rockefeller Hall.

Fukuyama’s keynote address at the international panel event will be followed by responses from Peter Katzenstein, Cornell’s Walter S. Carpenter Jr. Professor of International Studies, and John Mearsheimer, M.A. ’78, Ph.D. ’80, professor of political science at the University of Chicago. Isabel Hull, the John Stambaugh Professor of History, will moderate.

They will consider questions of how democracy is doing at home and abroad, how it is likely to fare in the years to come, and whether it will succeed or find itself under siege across much of the world.

Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He was previously a professor of international political economy at the School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University and professor of public policy at George Mason University. He has worked at the Rand Corp. and as a member of U.S. Department of State policy planning staff.

He received his B.A. from Cornell in classics and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science. He has written widely on democratization and international political economy. His 1992 book, “The End of History and the Last Man,” has more than 20 foreign editions. His latest book, “Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy,” was published in September.

Katzenstein specializes in Asian and European roles and norms in international relations, and he studies culture, identity, religion and regionalism in the interstate system. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and in 2013 was recognized by the journal Foreign Affairs as a “renowned scholar of international relations.”

Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago. An international relations theorist and the leading proponent of “offensive neorealism” in international relations, he has written on Ukraine, nuclear proliferation and deterrence, the Gulf War, the Palestinian-Israeli situation, the rise and containment of China, and lying in international politics. In 2003, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The International Panel Series provides faculty, visiting scholars, students and the local community the opportunity to address current and new issues in international studies that cross disciplines and regions. The event is co-sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies’ Foreign Policy Forum.