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On March 6, 2007, Dr. Greg Grandin of New York University presented a lecture entitled "Latin America , the United States , and the Rise of the New Imperialism." Drawing parallels between US involvement in Central America during the 1980s and present US activities in Iraq, Grandin argued that the policies of the Reagan administration have become a blueprint for American ambitions in the Middle East. More generally, he suggested that Reagan's Central American policies helped bring together a "New Right" coalition of neoconservatives, free traders, and evangelicals who have recently orchestrated an increasingly aggressive American foreign policy. 

Greg Grandin is the author of the prize-winning The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Duke, 2000), The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago, 2004) and Empire's Workshop: Latin, America, The United States , and the Rise of the New Imperialism (Metropolitan, 2006).  He has worked with the United Nations truth commission on political violence in Guatemala, the Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico, and has written for The New York Times, Harper's, and The Nation.  The event was sponsored by Latin America and International Studies.