Scholarship and Policymaking: Who Speaks Truth to Whom?

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University presents a Brown Bag Lecture by Henry Nau, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University, on his paper “Scholarship and Policymaking: Who Speaks Truth to Whom?”

The paper examines the relationship between the academic and policy worlds, challenging the traditional idea of the academy as an impartial and isolated observer of policy decisions. To the contrary, Professor Nau argues, “scholarship and statesmanship, theory and practice, the academy and policy worlds, while they are different, are nevertheless joined at the hip and neither can succeed, even within its own realm, without the other.”

Professor Nau holds a B.S. in Economics, Politics, and Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a M.A. and Ph.D. in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He has authored numerous books including The Myth of America's Decline: Leading the World Economy into the 1990's (Oxford, 1990), At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy (Cornell, 2002), and, most recently, Perspectives on International Relations: Power, Institutions, and Ideas (Congressional Quarterly, 2006).