The Eleanor Roosevelt/ Wendell Willkie Forum - Roads Not Taken by Michael A. Meeropol

Tuesday, July 23

7:30 pm 

As a historian, and  someone who  has lived American history as the  eldest son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Michael will talk about two important  choices the U.S. made in history and a looming choice to be made today. He will discuss the role Wendell Willkie played in America in 1940–1941, examine what many on  the left feared was an incipient American fascism during what was incorrectly called  the “McCarthy Era,” and ask if these stories have any lessons today as we approach a  presidential election in November. Michael A. Meeropol is a Professor Emeritus of Economics at Western New England  University in Springfield, Massachusetts. He holds a BA in economics from Swarthmore  College, a BA and MA in economics from Cambridge University, and a PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is co-author, with his brother Robert Meeropol, of We Are Your Sons, the Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, as well as  author of The Rosenberg Letters: The Complete Prison Correspondence of Julius and Ethel  Rosenberg and Surrender: How the Clinton Administration Completed the Reagan Revolution. He is a regular commentator on WAMC Radio, the National Public Radio affiliate  in Albany, New York. Admission is free, but please make a reservation at the Front Desk.

The Eleanor Roosevelt/ Wendell Willkie Forum 

Michael Meeropol’s presentation launches the new Roosevelt/Willkie  Forum — named for Eleanor Roosevelt, political figure, activist, and diplomat,  and Wendell Willkie, attorney, corporate executive, and the 1940 Republican  nominee for president of the United States. The Roosevelt/Willkie Forum is  made possible by a generous donation from Phil Willkie. Within a month of losing his bid for presidency to Franklin Delano Roosevelt,  Wendell Willkie began allying himself with his 1940 opponent. He supported a  military draft in peacetime and, on FDR’s request, went to London in January  1941 to meet with Winston Churchill. Willkie returned to testify before Congress  in support of FDR’s Lend Lease program to provide weapons to England.  Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson later wrote, “Willkie placed  principles above compromise. It was this kind of selflessness, following so  closely on the disappointment of a political defeat, that should keep Wendell  Willkie’s memory alive for all Americans.”