"The Sources of War and the Prospects for Peace"
a lecture by Dr. Richard D. Anderson, Jr.
Associate Professor of Political Science, UCLA
Saturday, August 28, 2010, 4 pm PST

"If wars happen because use of force to control territory enables states to attack each other, peace requires a new kind of political community to replace the state. We need a transnational, global effort to discuss what that community would be and to encourage people throughout the world to construct it everywhere." -Professor Richard Anderson, UCLA

Dick Anderson trained as a specialist on Soviet politics and foreign policy. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, his interests shifted to the study of moves toward democracy, and, noticing how shifts in discourse seemed to push along the transition from Soviet dictatorship to Russian elections, he began studying linguistics. He is the author of Public Politics in an Authoritarian State, a study published by Cornell University Press that shows how campaigning for political office in a non-electoral setting shaped Soviet foreign policy, and co-author of a joint volume, Post-Communism and the Theory of Democracy, published by Princeton University Press.