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News Release

Last modified: Wednesday, February 23, 2011

IU McNutt Lecture to examine success of modern conservatism

What: 2011 Paul V. McNutt Lecture at Indiana University Bloomington
Who: Bruce J. Schulman, historian at Boston University
Topic: "Rightward Bound: The Rise of Conservatism in Modern American Politics"
When: 7:30 p.m., March 7 (Monday)
Where: Georgian Room, Indiana Memorial Union

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Feb. 23, 2011

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Over the past three decades, conservatism has become a powerful force in American public life, largely defining the political agenda and shaping the landscape of cultural conflict. The near-universal acclaim for Ronald Reagan during the recent centennial of his birth highlights the prominence of the movement that Reagan brought to power.

Yet few Americans could have predicted the success of the political right a generation earlier, especially after Barry Goldwater's landslide defeat in 1964. How did conservatism emerge from the wilderness in the post-World War II era, moving from the margins of national politics to the center of American life?

In the 2011 Paul V. McNutt Lecture at Indiana University Bloomington, Professor Bruce J. Schulman of Boston University will explore the seedtime of the Reagan Revolution and how the peculiar birth pangs of modern conservatism continue to shape American politics.

The lecture, titled "Rightward Bound: The Rise of Conservatism in Modern American Politics," will take place at 7:30 p.m. on March 7 (Monday) in the Georgian Room of the Indiana Memorial Union, 900 E. Seventh St.

It is sponsored by the Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Schulman, the William E. Huntington Professor of History at Boston University, is the author of From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt (1991); Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism (1994); and The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Politics, and Society (2001). He is co-editor of Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (2007), and The Constitution and Public Policy (2008).

A frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and other publications, Schulman has appeared as an expert commentator on numerous television and radio programs. He is currently at work on a volume of the Oxford History of the United States, covering the years 1896-1929.

The annual McNutt Lecture honors Paul V. McNutt, who was dean of the Indiana University School of Law from 1925 to 1933, then became Indiana's governor and later served as U.S. high commissioner to the Philippines, director of the Federal Security Agency and chairman of the War Manpower Commission during World War II.

For more information about the lecture, contact Blake Harvey at the Department of History, 812-855-3236 or blaharve@indiana.edu.

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