Thursday, April 23, 2026, 6.00pm to 8.00pm EDT
The Monroe Doctrine is back in the headlines, after Donald Trump announced his “Donroe Doctrine” of hemispheric supremacy by removing the president of Venezuela and insisting that Greenland should become the fifty-first state. Like Teddy Roosevelt more than a century before him, President Trump is usually presented as corrupting the Monroe Doctrine’s original meaning.
Join Nick Guyatt, Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge, as we explore some of the ambiguities that were present at the creation of the Doctrine, before sketching what its surprising origin story can teach us about American power in our turbulent present.

Nicholas Guyatt is Professor of North American History at the University Cambridge, and a Fellow of Jesus College. He is the author of seven books, including Jefferson’s Wolf: A Founding Father’s Troubling Answer to the Problem of Slavery, which will be published in May by Harvard University Press, and the editor of the new Oxford Illustrated History of the United States, which will be published by Oxford University Press in June. He has written about American history and politics for numerous publications including the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Nation magazine.
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