Rothermere American Institute Oxford University

This presentation and discussion, features Gary Younge (University of Manchester) Alan Curtis (Eisenhower Foundation) on the legacies and lessons of the Kerner Commission and their relevance to the current American moment. Alan Curtis, President, Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation

Gary Younge, Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester

Chair: Mitch Robertson, Politics Graduate Scholar, Rothermere American Institute.

In 1968, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, commonly known as the Kerner Commission, concluded that America was heading towards “two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal”. Today, America’s communities are experiencing increasing racial tensions and inequality, working-class resentment over the unfulfilled American Dream, white supremacist violence, toxic inaction in Washington, and the decline of the nation’s global example.

This presentation and discussion with Alan Curtis and Gary Younge was hosted by Mitch Robertson and the Rothermere American Institute on 16 June 2020. Alan Curtis is President of the Eisenhower Foundation and recently co-edited Healing Our Divided Society with Senator Fred Harris, the last surviving member of the Kerner Commission. The book reflects on America’s urban climate today and sets forth evidence-based policies concerning employment, education, housing, neighbourhood development, and criminal justice based on what has been proven to work – and not work. Gary Younge is an award-winning author, broadcaster, and academic. He writes for The Guardian and the Financial Times.

Margaret Weir of Brown University, delivers the Winant Lecture in American Government

New Yorker fiction through the decades Deborah Treisman has been fiction editor at The New Yorker since 2003, having joined the magazine in 1998. She hosts the award-winning New Yorker Fiction Podcast. She has edited the anthology 20 Under 40: Stories from The New Yorker (2010) and most recently (with Anne Doran), Walter Hopps’s The Dream Colony: A Life in Art (2017).
Published since 1925, The New Yorker features journalism, commentary, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It has a wide audience beyond New York and is well known for its illustrated and often topical covers, its commentaries on popular culture and eccentric Americana, and its attention to modern fiction. It is published weekly for most of the year, with some issues covering a fortnight.
The annual Esmond Harmsworth Lecture in American Arts and Letters is the centrepiece of the Oxford’s American literary calendar. Made possible by the generosity of Esmond V. Harmsworth, the lecture has been given by some of America’s leading novelists, poets, playwrights, and literary critics.

Health and disease history of the Caribbean, 1491-1850: two syndemics John R. McNeill is widely considered a pioneer in the study of environmental history. His books include The Mountains of the Mediterranean World: An Environmental History (1992), Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-century World (2000), Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1640-1914 (2010), and most recently (with Peter Engelke), The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945 (2016). He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and President of the American Historical Association for 2019.

A talk on President Nixon's radical new healthcare programme proposed in early 1971. In early 1971, President Nixon proposed a radical new healthcare programme. The Family Health Insurance Plan (FHIP) proposed a national floor under health insurance, with national eligibility standards. All employers with one (later revised to ten) or more employees were to provide standard health insurance to their employees and their families, with federal subsidies to help those who could not afford the policy being made available. Now often compared to Obamacare, and in some respects more ambitious, the full FHIP never gained congressional backing.

John Price worked for the Nelson Rockefeller primary campaign before joining the Nixon White House. He later held senior positions at JP Morgan Chase and served as President and CEO of Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh from 2006-2010.

Winant Lecture in American Government