Park University’s 2025 Hauptmann Lecture to Discuss the American Decline and Crisis of Liberal Order

Park University's 2025 Hauptmann Lecture to Discuss the American Decline and Crisis of Liberal Order

September 4, 2025 - A presentation on "The Great Unravelling: American Decline and the Crisis of Liberal Order" will be the focus of Park University's 33rd annual Dr. Jerzy Hauptmann Distinguished Guest Lecture Series event on Thursday, Sept. 18, starting at 6 p.m. in the Jenkin and Barbara David Theater inside Alumni Hall on the University's flagship Parkville Campus. Admission is free and open to the public. In addition, the lecture, presented in conjunction with the American Society for Public Administration, will be livestreamed at parkumedia.com.

The speaker for the 2025 Hauptmann Lecture will be Daniel Nexon, Ph.D., professor in the Walsh School of Foreign Service and Government Department within the Mortara Center for International Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Related to the title of his speech, Nexon said, "The United States is the only country in human history to achieve global dominance, but after nearly 30 years of primacy it no longer bestrides the world like a colossus. What happened? How far has the U.S. actually fallen? And is it possible to halt, or even reverse, the relative decline of American international leadership?"

Nexon's research interests include how international order emerges and changes, issues in international relations theory, American foreign policy, power politics, the politics of religious contention and the relationship between popular culture and world politics. He is the co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020) and author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section Best Book Award for 2010.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Security Studies. During 2009-10, Nexon worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow. He also served as lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-18. Nexon earned a doctorate degree in political science from Columbia University in New York; a Master of Arts degree and Master of Philosophy degree in political science from Columbia; and a Bachelor of Arts degree in government from Harvard University.

The lecture series is named in honor of the late Park University professor emeritus of political science and public administration, Jerzy Hauptmann, Ph.D. Hauptmann taught at Park for more than 50 years, and launched the University's first graduate degree program in 1982. In 2001, Park's School for Public Affairs was renamed the Hauptmann School of Public Affairs in honor of this remarkable educator.

The Dr. Jerzy Hauptmann Distinguished Guest Lecture Series was established through the generosity of alumni, colleagues and friends of Hauptmann upon Hauptmann's 40th anniversary at Park University. The Hauptmann Lecture brings outstanding scholars to the Kansas City area to address topics related to Hauptmann's three areas of study: international politics, public administration and democracy.