Date/Time
Date(s) - 03/05/2016
19:30 - 21:30
Location
Zernikezaal, Academy building
Frans Verhagen will briefly address the political landscape at the end of the Obama years, to set the scene against which the current campaign is unfolding. What kind of country are the candidates running in? What are the major issues?
Mr. Verhagen argues that we are experiencing a major change in the political landscape. Both the Trump campaign and the Sanders campaign point to a major realignment in American politics, the first one since the Nixon election of 1968. He will discuss how we got here, what it will lead to on November 8, but more importantly, what it will mean for American politics and American society in the longer run.
Frans Verhagen has been observing and analyzing American politics for forty years. He was a foreign correspondent in the United States during the Reagan administration and had been writing articles and books about politics and American history ever since. He worked as journalist, managing editor and publisher at a Dutch publisher, and later ran his own magazine about the United States and the most extensive website about the US, amerika.nl, later morphed into meiguo.nl, where he had blogged since the late ninety nineties. He had published twelve books, among which a Lincoln biography and presidential biographies. His book about the Founding Fathers will appear in July. He studied law and sociology in Groningen, international relations in New York and wrote his dissertation at Radboud University.
After the lecture, Frans Verhagen will be joined by Feike Kuipers for a panel-discussion. Feike Kuipers has studied political science and American History at the University of Leiden. In his political science class the main subject of discussion was American politics and his history courses were very political: the perfect American politics program. Both programs focused on the way politicians used the political system for their own gain, by for example Gerrymandering or by abolishing ethical committees. During the summer, he enjoys working for the Democratic Party in the United States. He currently writes frequently for VerkiezingenVS, a Dutch website that follows the elections on foot.