On Monday, Feb 7, at 4:00 in Whittaker Hall Strobe Talbott, the current president of the Brookings Institution, will be making a major address titled “Angels of Our Nature: Polarization in America and Its Challenges for Universities and Think Tanks.”
STROBE TALBOTT
“Angels of Our Nature: Polarization in America and Its Challenges for Universities and Think Tanks”
4 p.m., February 7, 2011 Whitaker Auditorium
In Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address, given to a country fiercely divided over the institution of slavery, he pleads for reconciliation, saying: “We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” Talbott, statesman, author, and Brookings Institution president, sees that kind of wrenching polarization happening again in our country, and in this presentation he will explore the role that America’s scholarly institutions can play in summoning our better angels of our nature.