“Leadership in Conflict”

Susan Eisenhower
President, The Eisenhower Institute
November 19, 2002
Inaugural Lecture

In 1983, Susan Eisenhower founded the Eisenhower Institute, a think tank named for her grandfather, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and designed the institute’s U.S.-Soviet program. She also serves on the National Academy of Sciences’ standing Committee on International Security and Arms Control and works with the International Space Station Management Task Force, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Nuclear Threat Initiative, and the National Advisory Council of NASA. She is married to space scientist Roald Sagdeev.

Eisenhower has written over 300 articles and three books, including the bestsellers Breaking Free and Mrs. Ike. Since its inception, she has co-chaired the national effort “Save America’s Treasures,” first with Founding Chair Hillary Rodham Clinton and now with First Lady Laura Bush.

About The J. Roderick Davis Lectures
J. Roderick Davis is a 1958 graduate of Samford University (then Howard College). After graduation, he received advanced degrees in English and theology from Boston, Yale, and Columbia universities, followed by more than two decades of teaching in universities in New Jersey and New York. In 1990, he was chosen by his alma mater to come back as the Dean of Samford’s Howard College of Arts and Sciences. In his eleven years in that office, he helped enlarge the College faculty by thirty percent, created individual departments in Geography, Political Science, Philosophy, and Classics, and directed the streamlining and re-focusing of the university’s nationally-recognized core curriculum.

When Dean Davis retired from his office in 2001, his colleagues decided to honor him by establishing a lecture series in his name that would bring to campus recognized scholars and activists in areas of interest to students in the Arts and Sciences.

Previous Davis Lecturers and topics include:

2007 - Walter Isaacson, President and CEO, the Aspen Institute, Author, Einstein: His Life and Universe: "Einstein's Creativity"

2006 – Dr. Juan Hernandez, President, Organization for Hispanic Advancement: “The New American Pioneers: Why Are We Afraid of Mexican Immigrants?”

2005 – Dr. Fawaz A. Gerges, Professor of International Affairs and Middle Eastern Studies at Sarah Lawrence College: “The Far Enemy: How and Why Jihad Went Global”

2004 – Dr. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School: “Democracy and Human Dignity”

2003 – Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, Director of the National Cancer Institute: “The Future of Cancer: Progress with a Purpose”

2002 – Susan Eisenhower, President of the Eisenhower Institute: “Leadership in Conflict”