Doug Bereuter, the former Representative for Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District, will speak at Hastings College as a part of a series of events acknowledging the 30th anniversary of the end of the Cold War. Bereuter will speak at 6:00 p.m. on November 13 in Wilson Auditorium, which is in the lower level of the Wilson Mathematics and Computer Science Center (814 N. Turner Avenue).
The event is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a reception.
Bereuter’s lecture is titled “The End of the Cold War, or Is It?: One Congressman’s Perspective.” He will talk about his experiences during the collapse of the Berlin Wall and will provide his perspective on whether the Cold War is over—or not.
A second lecture, titled “We Have to Pay the Price: American Garrison Towns in Germany after 1989,” will be given by Dr. Adam Seipp, a professor of history at Texas A&M University, at 7:30 p.m., Friday, November 15 in Morrison-Reeves Science Center Room 219 (717 N. Ash Avenue). Refreshments will follow.
While Germans uniformly cheered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent unification of the country, the results were more problematic for the towns that had hosted American troops, the bulwark of NATO forces during the Cold War. Seipp will explore the complications that the “good news” of the fall of the Wall brought to these American garrison towns.
The talks are two of several events during the week organized by the Pushkin Institute for the Study of Russian Language and Culture at Hastings College, and the College’s Political Science and International Relations programs and the Department of History, Religion and Philosophy.
Other student-focused events include a Skype conversation with students from Pyatigorsk State University in Russia, Hastings College’s sister school; a discussion of the novel “The Wall Jumper;” and a discussion of the Netflix series “The Same Sky.” All are aimed at further discussing the Cold War.
About Bereuter
The Honorable Doug Bereuter represented Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District from 1979 to 2004. Prior to serving in Congress, he served one term as a Nebraska state senator.
During his congressional career, Bereuter served on several key domestically-orientated committees that were important to Nebraska and the nation. In the area of foreign affairs, he was a leading member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, serving six years as Committee vice chairman, and as a chair for both the European and Asia-Pacific sub-committee, as well as serving long tenures on both its Human Rights and Economic Policy and Trade sub-committees. Bereuter also served nearly 10 years on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, retiring as its vice chairman.
He also spent 20 years on the House delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, including 10 years as delegation chairman, and retiring as the president of the assembly.
About Seipp
Dr. Adam Seipp’s research focuses on war and social change in modern Germany, particularly the period since 1945. He is currently working on two research projects. The first is a social history of the American military presence in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1945-1995. The second examines the role of testimony in shaping narratives of concentration camp liberation in the United States and Germany.
He received a bachelor’s in history and African studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, then went on to earn his master’s and PhD in history also from UNC.
Nebraska’s premier private college, Hastings College is a four-year institution located in Hastings, Nebraska, that focuses on student academic and extracurricular achievement. Hastings College has been named among “Great Schools, Great Prices” by U.S. News & World Report and a “Best in the Midwest” by The Princeton Review. For more, go to hastings.edu.
