Mansfield Dialogues
The Mansfield Dialogues is a public lecture series designed to bring community together to discuss critical issues in international engagement and ethics in public affairs.
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ASL interpreters are available upon request. Please contact Sarah Ward no later than two business days before the event to inquire about interpretation and other accessibility measures.
The Mansfield Dialogues now offer Renewal Credits for teachers through OPI. Please contact Tyson Warner at tyson.warner@mso.umt.edu in advance if you plan to take advantage of this opportunity.
The Mansfield Dialogues are presented in partnership with the Project on American Democracy and Citizenship.
2023 Mansfield Lecture with Congresswoman Liz Cheney
This event will not be available virtually.
While we offer the majority of our programming via Zoom, we are unable to offer this Mansfield Lecture or our upcoming Korea conference via Zoom. We deeply apologize and look forward to providing as many events as possible to our Zoom audience.
October 5, 2023, 7:30 p.m. MDT in the Dennison Theatre
Congresswoman Liz Cheney will sit down for a fireside chat with former Montana Governor and Mansfield Board Chair Marc Racicot. The Vice Chair of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, Cheney will discuss “American Democracy and the Rule of Law”.
About the Speaker: Liz Cheney served as the U.S. representative for Wyoming's at-large congressional district from 2017 to 2023. She chaired the House Republican Conference, the third-highest position in the House Republican leadership, from 2019 to 2021, and served as the Vice Chair of the Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. She was also a member of the House Armed Services Committee, China Task Force, Natural Resources Committee, and the House Committee on Rules. Cheney served previously at the State Department as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and in positions for USAID and the Department of State working in Poland, Hungary, Russia, and Ukraine. Cheney practiced law with White and Case and at the International Finance Corporation. A specialist in national security and foreign policy, she is the co-author, along with her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, of Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America. Cheney received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Colorado College and received her Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago Law School. In 2022, Cheney, along with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, received the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library’s prestigious Profile in Courage Award with a commendation for her “consistent and courageous voice in defense of democracy."
This event will not be available virtually.
While we offer the majority of our programming via Zoom, we are unable to offer this Mansfield Lecture or our upcoming Korea conference via Zoom. We deeply apologize and look forward to providing as many events as possible to our Zoom audience.
This dialogue is sold out. Please join our mailing list to learn more about future Mansfield Center events.
Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the Korea-US Alliance
October 9, 2023, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. MDT in University Center Ballroom
Join the Mansfield Center and the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea for an exclusively in-person one-day conference celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Korea-US Alliance. This conference will focus on the state of the Korea-US Alliance at 70, the importance of the Korea-US trade relationship to global economic security, and the Mansfield Center's Korea programs.
China's Global Influence Activities: Growing Threat or Failure?
October 26, 2023, 7 p.m. MDT via Zoom
Join our speaker Josh Kurlantzick, Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, and moderator Bay Fang, the President of Radio Free Asia, for a dialogue about the impact of China's global influence activities.
Since China’s ascendancy toward great power status began in the 1990s, many observers have focused on its economic growth and expanding military power. In contrast, most viewed China’s ability to project “soft power” through its media industries and its sharp power global influence campaigns as quite limited, and its ability to wield influence within the domestic politics of other countries as nonexistent. But as Joshua Kurlantzick shows in his new book Beijing’s Global Media Offensive: China's Uneven Campaign to Influence Asia and the World, all of these things have begun to change dramatically.
Kurlantzick will discuss how China is attempting to become a media and information superpower around the world, and also trying to wield traditional forms of influence to shape the domestic politics of other countries. Indeed, China for the first time is actively seeking to insert itself into many other countries’ elections, social media, media, and overall politics, including that of the United States.
He also will trace the ways in which China is increasingly collaborating with Russia in their efforts to become more powerful global influencers via disinformation and other tools. Yet while China has worked hard at becoming a media superpower and to influence other countries' politics and societies, it sometimes has failed to reap gains from its efforts. It has undermined itself with overly assertive, alienating diplomacy and is now broadly unpopular in many countries. Still, Kurlantzick contends, China’s media, information, disinformation, and more traditional influence campaigns will continue to expand and adapt, potentially helping Beijing to wield major influence over other countries’ politics—and to export its models of political and internet control.