An Evening With Philip Bobbitt

When: 6 p.m., Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Where: LBJ Auditorium, 2313 Red River St.

With the threats of war echoing across the world, what can we learn from the past about the relationship between strategy and law? Many believe we are at a pivotal point in history, but what makes it so pivotal?

Philip Bobbitt, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas and a historian of nuclear strategy …drawing on his latest book The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History…offers an answer. The New York Times describes it as “Magisterial in its scope and ambition…His evolutionary map of warfare’s impact on the state foreshadows the kind of events still unfolding.”

Sir Michael Howard, the former Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford and the Chair of Military and Naval History at Yale, calls The Shield of Achilles “One of the most important books on international relations published in the last 50 years.”

Bobbitt, who holds the A.W. Walker Centennial Chair at UT Law, was formerly the Anderson Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, where he was a member of the Modern History faculty. He was later the Marsh Christian Fellow in War Studies at King’s College, London. He has served as associate counsel to the President for intelligence and international security, legal counsel to the Senate Select Committee on the Iran-Contra Affair, the counselor on international law at the Department of State, as well as director of intelligence, senior director for critical infrastructure, and senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council. He has written several previous books on nuclear strategy, social choice, and constitutional law. He lives in Austin, Washington, and London. Mr. Bobbitt will be signing Shield of Achilles in the Auditorium lobby from 5 to 5:30 p.m.