German Social Scientists and U.S. Foreign Policy

Hans Speier was a German social scientist who was among the many European intellectuals who immigrated to America during the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. In this program, University of Washington American foreign policy Professor Daniel Bessner talked about the influence of Hans Speier and other exiled social scientists on U.S. foreign policy, especially through think tanks created during the Cold War to provide research and analysis to the U.S. military. Mr. Bessner is the author of Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual. The National History Center and Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. co-hosted this event. close