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Equality and Exceptionalism: Does Obama Understand America?

2,669 views · Published 2 August 2010 · 3:38 · Indexed 28 October 2026

Channel: FORA.tv · 2010 · News & Politics

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2010/07/14/Uncommon_Knowledge_Charles_Hill

Hoover Institution research fellow Charles Hill traces the concept of equality to the mid-16th century debate on the Spanish treatment of Native Americans. He contends that American exceptionalism is valid, and accuses President Obama of not understanding the concept.

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During a long and distinguished career in the State Department, Charles Hill served as an adviser to Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz. From 1992 to 1996 Ambassador Hill served as special consultant on policy to the secretary-general of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Now a fellow at the Hoover Institution, Ambassador Hill is also the diplomat-in-residence at Yale, where he teaches a yearlong seminar, Studies in Grand Strategy. Ambassador Hill is the author of a number of books, the most recent of which is Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order.

Hill explains why statecraft cannot be practiced in the absence of literary insight. "The international world of states and their modern system is a literary realm ... where the greatest issues of the human condition are played out." From theory to practice, Hill bridges the gap between Thucydides and Obama to consider the practice of grand strategies in U.S. foreign policy today. - Hoover Institution

Charles Hill, a career minister in the U.S. Foreign Service, is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and cochair of the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.

He was executive aide to former U.S. secretary of state George P. Shultz (1983-89) and served as special consultant on policy to the secretary-general of the United Nations from 1992 to 1996. Hill is also the Brady-Johnson Distinguished Fellow in Grand Strategy at Yale University. His most recent book is Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order (Yale Press, 2010).

Peter M. Robinson is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he writes about business and politics, edits Hoover's quarterly journal, the Hoover Digest, and hosts Hoover's television program, Uncommon Knowledge.

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