Last month I presented three informal, non-credit evening lectures here at Boulder for the “Maymester” session, and a few of you (well, okay, one person, with initials T.O.) wondered whether they could be videotaped and posted here. And so here they are–but only if you really have a lot of spare time on your hands, since each one is more than an hour long, and conducted in my somewhat stream-of-consciousness style that can work well in a live classroom or lecture hall, but perhaps not so well on a video like this. Just sayin’, and offering fair warning.
The first lecture was about the idea of “Statesmanship,” a concept thought to defy objective definition, but look, if universities can go whole (grass-fed) hog for “sustainability,” why not consider statesmanship an intelligible idea? This first lecture begins with a critique of the standard social science modeling approach to political life, and then careens wildly from Max Weber to Winston Churchill. The sound on this first lecture is not so good, so I used a better mic setup for the last two.
The second lecture continues the story of Churchill, and then launches into the U.S. Constitution, which was the advertised topic for the second week.
The last lecture continues with some thoughts on constitutionalism, and then proceeds to covering Ronald Reagan and the end of the Cold War, the advertised topic for the third week.
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