(WASHINGTON, D.C.) President Donald Trump has adopted a tough line on North Korea and announced the deployment of more American troops to Afghanistan, actions that seem to signal a resumption of an interventionist and confrontational foreign policy. At that same time Catholic University is launching a Center for the Study of Statesmanship (CSS), whose purpose is to explore the sources and prospects for leadership in keeping with the spirit of restraint and compromise characteristic of American constitutionalism.

At an event at the National Press Club on Wednesday, Sept. 13, speakers will offer brief remarks about current American foreign policy challenges and the role that the center can play in enriching and redirecting public discussion.

Those who will offer remarks include:

  • Most Rev. Timothy Broglio, archbishop for the Military Services, USA and a former Vatican diplomat who will discuss the impact of American interventionism upon Christians in the Middle East as well as the stresses and strains of U.S. interventionism upon the U.S. military and their families
  • Doug Bandow, a columnist for Forbes.com and a foreign policy scholar at the Cato Institute who will discuss recent policy failures of U.S. interventions and the future of American foreign policy under President Trump
  • Claes Ryn, professor of politics and executive director of CSS, who will discuss dubious assumptions behind interventionism and how a new U.S. foreign policy of restraint is in the American constitutional tradition.

Speakers will be available to the media following the brief program. The event runs from 6 to 7:30 p.m. The National Press Club is located on the 13th floor in the Fourth Estate Room at 529 14th St., NW, Washington, D.C.

CSS comes under the umbrella of Catholic University’s Institute for Human Ecology, which was established to take up Pope Francis’s call in Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home to study the relationships of human beings to one another and the world around them.

The center will promote research, teaching, and public discussion about how statesmanship can defuse conflict and foster respectful foreign and domestic relations. Ryn has written extensively on the dangers of abstract ideology in foreign and domestic affairs and about the moral and cultural preconditions of good relations among persons, peoples, and civilizations.


MEDIA: To schedule an interview or attend this event, contact the Office of Marketing and Communications at communications@cua.edu or 202-319-5600.

ABOUT: The Catholic University of America is the national university of the Catholic Church and the only higher education institution founded by the U.S. bishops. Established in 1887 as a papally chartered graduate and research center, the University comprises 12 schools and 26 research facilities and is home to 3,241 undergraduate and 2,835 graduate students.

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