Join us as Colin Woodard, award-winning journalist and author, addresses a pressing concern: The United States is facing a period of significant political transformation that many view as a test of the nation's democratic foundations. He reveals America's structural and historical vulnerabilities that made this crisis possible, the role of regional cultures in enabling it, and how a shared national purpose can play a decisive role in turning the tide

For more than 20 years, the Margaret Chase Smith Library has hosted the Leeke-Shaw Lecture with scholars, politicians, and others speaking on domestic and international affairs. This year we invite attendees to bring a bagged lunch and join us in the discussion.

Woodard will also offer books for sale and signing following the presentation.

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This program is generously supported by contributions from Ada E. Leeke and Evelyn Shaw.

Agenda:

10:00-Coffee, Tea and Light Refreshments
10:30-12:00 Colin Woodard 
12:00-Lunch/Book signing 
1:00 Adjourn

Speaker Bio:

Colin Woodard, a New York Times bestselling author and historian, is the director of Nationhood Lab at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, where he studies the problems of United States nationhood and how to solve them. A veteran foreign correspondent who has reported from more than fifty countries and seven continents, he covered the fall and rise of authoritarian regimes across Eastern Europe and the Balkans and the aftermath of the Bosnian genocide. He received a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize for his investigative work at Maine’s Portland Press Herald. He’s the author of seven books, including American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood and Nations Apart: How Clashing Regional Cultures Shattered America, which will be released by Viking Press November 4th. His books have been translated into thirteen foreign languages and inspired a primetime NBC television series and a blockbuster Ubisoft video game.

He's a graduate of Tufts University and the University of Chicago a past Pew Fellow in International Journalism at the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies and a current Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London. He lives in Maine.