According to Mead, the Hamiltonian school supports pragmatic and situational solutions, the Jacksonian school is populist and values military prowess, the Wilsonian school believes in a moral commitment to the rest of the world and the Jeffersonian school favors a limited degree of intervention.
“It’s like four people wrestling over the wheel that steers a ship,” Mead said.
Each school has its merits, he argued.
“Even the Jacksonian, that kind of cowboy diplomacy, has its value,” Mead said, citing the importance of people who took action to help people in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.
Mead told students that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have created a general consensus on foreign policy among the American public that has not existed since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
“Now, when the President wants to do a particular foreign policy, all he has to do is call it an anti-terror initiative,” he said.
The IOP provided interested students with free copies of Mead’s latest book.
Prior to the discussion, Mead informally discussed grade inflation, last spring’s Progressive Student Labor Movement sit-in and campus reactions to the war in Afghanistan.