Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series

I am pleased to invite you to the 35th Hofstra University Distinguished Faculty Lecture, which will be presented by Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Professor Meena Bose, the Peter S. Kalikow Chair in Presidential Studies and Director of Hofstra's Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency. Professor Bose's lecture, titled "Looking for Change: Evaluating the First Hundred Days of the Obama Administration," will be delivered during Common Hour (11:15 a.m.–12:45 p.m.) on Wednesday, April 29, 2009, at the Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, first floor of the Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library.

Meena Bose joined the Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty in 1996, taught at the United States Military Academy at West Point from 2000 to 2006, and returned to Hofstra as the Peter S. Kalikow Chair in Presidential Studies in 2006. She is a graduate of Princeton University, where she earned a Ph.D. in politics. She is the author of Shaping and Signaling Presidential Policy: The National Security Decision Making of Eisenhower and Kennedy (1998), and editor of the reference volume The New York Times on the Presidency (2009). She also is co-editor (with Rosanna Perotti) of From Cold War to New World Order: The Foreign Policy of George H.W. Bush (2002), co-editor (with Mark Landis) of The Uses and Abuses of Presidential Ratings (2003), and co-editor (with John J. DiIulio, Jr.) of Classic Ideas and Current Issues in American Government (2007). She is a contributor to the eleventh edition (2008) of the American Government: Institutions and Policies textbook by James Q. Wilson and John J. DiIulio, Jr. In Addition, she was scholar-in-residence for a non-partisan course sponsored by The Washington Center in connection with the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis.

Professor Bose's lecture will examine agenda setting and policy making in the first few months of the Obama administration. It will discuss the structure of President Barack Obama's advisory team as well as the president's key initiatives in domestic and foreign affairs. It also will examine the political constraints and opportunities presented by Congress and public opinion. The "hundred days" concept will be evaluated, with a brief look at the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt for historical context, followed by selected case studies of how subsequent presidents have fared during their first few months in office. The lecture will conclude with a discussion of prospects for presidential leadership for the rest of President Obama's term.

President Rabinowitz and I look forward to joining you at this lecture.

Herman A. Berliner, Ph.D.
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs