​For nearly 75 years, the United States has championed a world order based on multilateral cooperation and the rule of law. While U.S. policies have never matched U.S. rhetoric over that time period, it would be fair to say that the United States has been a leader in promoting and supporting a rule-based international order. Professor Carlson will examine the Trump Administration’s actions and rhetoric with respect to the international rule of law and consider whether the Trump administration’s behavior reflects a sharp change from the past or merely a more honest and straightforward presentation of a longstanding “American First” approach.

​Jeff Biggers is the American Book Award–winning author of several works of history, memoir, journalism, and theater, including The United States of Appalachia, praised by the Citizen Times as a “masterpiece of popular history”; State Out of the Union, selected by Publishers Weekly as a Top Ten Social Science book in 2012; and Reckoning at Eagle Creek, winner of the Delta Prize for Literature and David Brower Award for Environmental Reporting.