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Annual Dinner & Tannenbaum Lecture
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THE SIXTY-FOURTH ANNUAL DINNER MEETING
Wednesday, March 12, 2008 Reception at 6:00 PM, Dinner at 7:00 PM
The Faculty House 400 West 117 Street, New York, NY
Tickets $40, Rapporteurs $5 RSVP Required, 212.854.2389, univ.seminars@columbia.edu
Featuring Presentation of the Tannenbaum-Warner Award by Robert L. Belknap to
Seth Neugroschl
The Tannenbaum Lecture
GEORGE WASHINGTON'S THIRD TERM: THE AFTERLIVES OF DEMOCRATIC POLITICIANS
to be given by Lisa Anderson
For decades--indeed centuries--the United States has promoted democracy as the most desirable form of government. Much energy has been devoted to drafting constitutions, designing representative institutions, constructing electoral systems, and assessing the most desirable sequence of reforms for democratic transitions. Throughout, however, almost no attention has been given to the individuals who make themselves the trial subjects of democratic experiments: the elected officials of new democracies. Yet the decision to risk defeat in elections or—more boldly—to retire from office at the end of one’s term, assumes that political figures have something else to do—a metaphorical farm to which to repair.
In the industrialized world, there is a robust private sector into which to retire; handsome speaking fees, lucrative consultancies and prestigious appointments await retired public servants. Bill Clinton’s post-presidential life is well documented; Ireland’s Mary Robinson made a career of advocacy, serving as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and now as President of a foundation-supported NGO. Even in new democracies, former heads of state sometimes do very well: Mexico’s Ernesto Zedillo teaches at Yale and serves on the board of directors of Procter & Gamble, Union Pacific, Alcoa, and Electronic Data Systems.
But for many newly retired new democrats, the question is not so clear. Take, for example, Benjamin Mkapa, former President of Tanzania (and Columbia alumnus), who stepped down in December 2005 at the end of his second five year term. Accustomed to the perquisites of office, including a controversial presidential jet, Mkapa’s plans were the object of considerable curiosity;
by the spring of 2006, he was the focus of local press stories complaining that he was virtually invisible: “Mkapa should come out and tell us what he is doing. We have the right to know what our former president is doing.” Insofar as democracy depends on the willingness of its most faithful servants to abandon their roles, failure to attend to the afterlives of public servants represents a striking, and perhaps even dangerous, omission on the part of both its promoters and its scholars.
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