The Department of History cordially invites you to attend the Gary R. Hess Lecture in Policy History: “The Paradox of Wilsonianism: World War I and American Internationalism” by Lloyd E. Ambrosius of the University of Nebraska.  The lecture, scheduled to coincide with the centennial of America’s entry into the First World War, will take place at 4:00 pm on Thursday, March 30, in Room 228 of the Bowen-Thompson Student Union.  At the initiative of Professor Hess’s former students, this annual lectureship is held to recognize his contributions to the profession and university during his forty-five years of service from 1964 to 2009.

Lloyd E. Ambrosius is Emeritus Professor of History and Samuel Clark Waugh Distinguished Professor of International Relations at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which honored him with the Louise Pound-George Howard Distinguished Career Award in 2015.  Professor Ambrosius is one of the leading scholars of the Wilson Presidency.  He is the author of Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition: The Treaty Fight in Perspective (1987), Wilsonian Statecraft: Theory and Practice of Liberal Internationalism during World War I (1991), and Wilsonianism: Woodrow Wilson and His Legacy in American Foreign Relations (2002).  His forthcoming book on Woodrow Wilson and American Internationalism will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2017.

Professor Ambrosius has participated throughout his career in the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) in various ways, including membership on its Council and the Editorial Board of Diplomatic History. He also served as member and chair of the SHAFR program committee and the selection committee for the Norman and Laura Graebner Award.  His historiographical essay on “Woodrow Wilson and World War I” will appear in the April 2017 issue of SHAFR’s newsletter, Passport.  He was president of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era for two years in 2015 and 2016, having served the previous two years as vice president.  He continues as a member of its Council.