Professor and noted author Philip Chase Bobbitt lectures about the end of the nation-state and the future of higher education.

Professor Bobbitt, author of The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History, (2002) is the A.W. Walker Centennial Chair in Law at the University of Texas.

One of the nation's leading constitutional theorists, Professor Bobbitt's academic interests include constitutional law, international security, and the history of strategy.

Bobbitt is a member of the American Law Institute, The Council on Foreign Relations, the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He has served as associate counsel to the President; the counselor on International Law at the U.S. State Department; legal counsel to the Senate Iran- Contra Committee; and director for Intelligence, senior director for Critical Infrastructure, and senior director for Strategic Planning at the National Security Council.

He was formerly the Anderson Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, where he was a member of the Modern History faculty. He was also the Marsh Christian Fellow in War Studies at King's College, London. Bobbitt received his A.B. in 1971 from Princeton University, his J.D. in 1975 from Yale University, and his Ph.D. in 1983 from Oxford University.

Along with his 2002 creation, he has published five other books: Constitutional Interpretation (1991), Democracy and Deterrence (1987), U.S. Nuclear Strategy (with Freedman and Treverton, 1989), Constitutional Fate (1982), and Tragic Choices (with Calabresi, 1978). (Several of these books are available for purchase in the USC Pertusati Bookstore.) Reviewers have widely praised his latest writing:

"In The Shield of Achilles, Philip Bobbitt presents an extraordinarily sophisticated and comprehensive survey of war, peace and nationhood….[It] will enhance the intellectual underpinnings of policy by encouraging the next generation of national and global leaders to consider the complex issues they will have to address. Philip Bobbitt has made a valuable contribution to wider understanding of how the world really works."
- The Dallas Morning News

"Once in a great while, there comes a book so ambitious in scope and so original in its insights that it challenges our comfortable patterns of thought and provokes widespread discussion in academic and political circles. The Shield of Achilles clearly does...a rare and important book."
- Fort Worth Star Telegram

"Indeed, what is truly curious is not the radical revolution in science and culture that again Mr. Bobbitt so deftly and comprehensively describes-computers, global communications and transportation, nuclear proliferation, and random terrorism-but how the United States through its reactionary 18th century Constitution, unwieldy Congress, and traditional carriers, jets, and subs, has been able to keep the peace and protect its citizens without creating new consortiums or altering its existing political framework. All that may change. But for now, Mr. Bobbitt's often brilliant catalog of the current global chaos remains just that-an astute diagnosis."
- The Washington Times

This event is sponsored by the Office of the Provost as part of the strategic planning process.