PROFESSOR DAVID M. KENNEDY
Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History
Stanford University

Reflecting his interdisciplinary training in American Studies, which combined the fields of history, literature, and economics, Professor Kennedy's scholarship is notable for its integration of economic and cultural analysis with social and political history. His 1970 book, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, embraced the medical, legal, political, and religious dimensions of the subject and helped to pioneer the emerging field of women's history. Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980) used the history of American involvement in World War I to analyze the American political system, economy, and culture in the early twentieth century. Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War (1999) recounts the history of the United States in the two great crises of the Great Depression and World War II.

Professor Kennedy teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in the history of the twentieth-century United States, American political and social thought, American foreign policy, American literature, and the comparative development of democracy in Europe and America.

2007 LEADERSHIP DIALOGUE SCHOLAR

THE EMERGING DOMINANCE OF THE AMERICAN WEST IN THE ECONOMY, CULTURE AND POLITICS

OF THE UNITED STATES

Professor David M. Kennedy

The American West is conventionally defined as including the sixteen states that lie in whole or in part west of the One Hundredth Meridian, and Alaska and Hawaii. These lectures explored the dramatic developments that have transformed this region since World War II. Massive internal migration has combined with unprecedented immigration inflows to make the West America’s fastest-growing region. It now contains the two most populous states, California and Texas, which between them account for almost 20 percent of the nation’s population.

Silicon Valley in California and the Microsoft-Amazon complex around Seattle are the world’s acknowledged centers of technological and commercial innovation. If California were an independent country, its nearly $2 trillion economy would easily qualify it for membership in the G-8. The western coastal states are America’s portal to Asia, the site of equally dynamic social and economic change. The political center of gravity in the United States has also marched steadily westward, as the western states alone will soon contain enough electoral votes to determine who occupies the White House. What are the implications of these seismic shifts for America’s, and the world’s future?

As 2007 Leadership Dialogue Scholar, Professor Kennedy delivered an influential nationwide series of lectures addressing the theme of the Emerging Dominance of the American West in the Economy, Culture and Politics of the United States.

David Kennedy also co-hosted the West Coast Leadership Dialogue at Stanford University in January 2009.