Robert McNamara is visiting Cambridge this week to take part in a series of discussions about US foreign policy from the 1960s to the present. Mr McNamara was Secretary of Defence in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and a key policy maker during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War.

In recent years, he has been very much concerned with reviewing American policy and his own role in it - most notably in his book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (1996). As part of this process he has been involved in dialogue with both Cuban and North Vietnamese policy makers. As a former president of the World Bank, he has been interested in economic development and in arms control, and currently works on health care issues in Africa.

Today, Thursday 9 May, Mr McNamara and his academic collaborator, Robert K Brigham, will be at the Law Faculty giving oral history presentations on the Cuban Missile Crisis and on the escalation of the Vietnam War. Then at 5pm Mr McNamara will be giving a public lecture in the Lady Mitchell Hall bringing his own experience to bear on current international events and US policy, in a lecture entitled Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing and Catastrophe in the 21st Century.

Yesterday, Wednesday May 8, he took part in a colloquium at Sidney Sussex College on 1960s' US policy where Cambridge PhD students and other young British scholars gave papers on Vietnam, on the wider foreign policy interests of the Johnson administration, and on the domestic consequences of the Vietnam War. Mr McNamara offered his unique personal perspective on these papers.

Today's lecture is open to members of the University and the general public.

Mellon Professorial Fund Public Lecture
Robert S. McNamara
Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing and Catastrophe in the 21st Century
5pm Lady Mitchell Hall, Sidgwick Site, Cambridge.
Admission is free.


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