Seminar Between Planning and Governance

Analyzing Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society policies, especially the War on Poverty, the talk examines the transformations liberalism faced with the emergence of social organizations and movements whose radicalism challenged the New Deal compromise. During this crisis - when US liberal thinkers and policymakers believed they could govern social forces by finally addressing racial divisions - American liberalism sought to free itself from the political burden of the New Deal order and its model of social planning. It did so to respond to both the critiques of social movements and conservative attacks, but above all to recenter the ethics of the individual against what it perceived as the radical, uncontrolled expansion of collective forces. These forces had used the Community Action Program both to access federal resources and to challenge the social order that had long managed and preserved racist, patriarchal, and class hierarchies. To join, register here: https://tally.so/r/Y5Qvgz

The seminar is part of the The European Forum on US History.

Partners: 

American Studies Center, Centro di Studi sugli Stati Uniti-Unibo, Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po, Instituto Franklin-UAH, Roosevelt Institute for American Studies, Rothermere American Institute, University of Southern Denmark.