As America’s long military experience in Iraq has shown, it is good to have an exit policy — and prudent also to find ways to hold government policymakers accountable for their mistakes.

Such themes come out in “,” by , an assistant professor in the 91±¬ÁÏ’s . The book was published this spring by Cornell University Press.

The book is a biography of (1905-1990), one of the first powerful minds to exit rising Nazi Germany, in September of 1933. In the United States, he eventually joined the RAND Corporation, a key think-tank in post-war America and, Bessner said, “the fount of much of U.S. nuclear strategy in the 1950s and 1960s.”

Speier was among a “remarkable group of exiles from Nazi Germany who transformed American intellectual life,” Bessner said, along with political theorist , philosopher , and sociologist/composer .

As Bessner began studying this cohort of intellectual émigrés from Germany, it became clear that many of them, including Speier, had worked for the U.S. government during and after World War II. By studying Speier, Bessner said, he explored the process by which such intellectuals exited academe for “the halls of power,” and how European and American histories “have informed each other over the course of the 20^th century.”

He notes several contemporary policymakers who came to government through academia as well, including , , and George W. Bush-era advisers and .

What also became clear in studying Speier were “significant blind spots” in how such global thinkers viewed their contributions and their legacy, Bessner said: “Critically, neither Speier nor his colleagues had any vision of how intellectuals should be held accountable when they gave poor advice that led to disastrous policy outcomes.”

Such is true, Bessner said, of the career of Wolfowitz, who after helping lead the U.S. into “the disastrous Iraq war,” left government to head the World Bank, and in time ended up a foreign policy adviser to failed presidential candidate Jeb Bush. In other words, Bessner said, “Wolfowitz was not held accountable for his failure, which was a problem that Speier and the generation that built the institutions of the foreign policy establishment never considered.”

Bessner, whose formal title is the Anne H. H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy, said he has two audiences and goals in mind for the book.

It is for the foreign policy experts themselves — those who work in think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution, who he would like to be “more modest about their expertise and their ability to predict the future” and give average Americans a stronger voice in policymaking.

But it is also for “ordinary people” not in politics or policy, too, he said — to encourage them to be more active in foreign policy debates and to show that while governments continue to need such experts, they aren’t always right.

“Simply put,” he said, “I want to make the system of expert governance we presently have — the system that Speier helped create in the mid-20^th century — more effective, more democratic, and more just.”

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For more information about Bessner and his work, contact him at 206-616-8608 or dbessner@uw.edu.

This 10-part series examines the ongoing impact of the 2016 election on countries and regions worldwide. Each week, Jackson School faculty experts will explore perspectives from Europe, Asia, Mexico, Russia and the Middle East as well as questions of climate change and historical context in the U.S. presidency.

“” lectures will be held from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Monday afternoons in room 110 of Kane Hall, and all are open to the public. Jackson School Director will be moderator for these events.

The schedule is as follows:

Oct. 2: Trump and the World — a Historical Perspective, with , assistant professor of international studies
Oct. 9: The Middle East and Israel, with , professor of international studies
Oct. 16: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Gulf, with , affiliate professor of international studies
Oct. 23: The US-Mexican Border, with , associate professor and chair of the
Oct. 30: India, with , associate professor, director of the
Nov. 6: China, with , professor of international studies
Nov. 13: The Korean Peninsula, with , professor of international studies
Nov. 20: The International Climate Regime, with , professor of international studies and director of the
Nov. 27: Russia, with , professor of history and international studies.
Dec. 4: Final panel discussion and round table.

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For more information about the series, contact the Jackson School at 206-543-6001 or jsisadv@uw.edu. Interested press may contact Monique Thormann, Jackson School director of communications, at 206-685-0578 or thormm@uw.edu.