In his November 13 lecture on Israel and the Truman administration, Michael Doran gave us a front-row seat to the conflict between President Harry Truman and his bureaucratic counselors over the issue of whether the U.S. should recognize the new State of Israel.

On December 18, Dr. Doran will tell the story of President Truman’s successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Eisenhower entered the presidency convinced that Truman was wrong, the bureaucracy was right, and America’s policy toward the Middle East would need to be re-balanced. But by the end of his eight years in office, President Eisenhower had completed a turnaround. He now believed the opposite: Truman was right, the bureaucracy was wrong, and America’s policy toward the Middle East would indeed need to be re-balanced, but away from the strategic concepts he himself had adopted before learning the realities of Middle Eastern politics.

Guided by Dr. Doran, we will meet and get to know, in addition to Eisenhower, such key figures in this drama as Gamal Abdel Nasser, John Foster Dulles, and David Ben-Gurion, and we’ll be introduced to events and ideological positions that bear a surprising relevance today. For while American attitudes toward Israel and the Middle East have changed, contemporary debates within the national-security establishment echo those going back more than a half-century.

The Location: Live Webcast

The lectures will be webcast live from the Tikvah Center in Manhattan. Recordings will be made available live and for five days after each lecture. Just click the play button at the top of this page when the time comes.

Questions?

Contact Mosaic’s editors at [email protected].

The Date

Monday, December 18, 2017 at 6:30 pm.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please contact Avi Snyder at [email protected].