After a year beset by a pandemic, civil unrest, and political turmoil, the January 6 attack on the US Capitol began 2021 with the first major attack on American soil since the falling of the twin towers some 20 years before. What are the sources of US political dissolution and division and the resulting implications for Australia? What is the connection between the lives of individual Americans and the dysfunction that characterises Washington? What explains the seismic shifts in the politics and culture in places as diverse as Connecticut, West Virginia and Chicago?
To discuss what led to this moment and what can be done about it, the United States Studies Centre hosted a discussion with Evan Osnos, National Book Award and Pulitzer prize-winning author of Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury in conversation with USSC Non-Resident Senior Fellow Dr Charles Edel.
Evan Osnos
Staff Writer, The New Yorker
Evan Osnos is a staff writer at The New Yorker. His latest book, Wildland: The Making of America's Fury, is a New York Times bestseller hailed by critics as one of the best books of the year. His first book, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, based on eight years of living in Beijing, won the National Book Award. From 2008 to 2013, he was The New Yorker’s China correspondent. Previously, he worked at the Chicago Tribune, where he was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.
Dr Charles Edel
Australia Chair and Senior Adviser, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Dr Charles Edel is the inaugural Australia Chair and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He was previously a Senior Fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. Prior to this, he was Associate Professor of Strategy and Policy at the US Naval War College, and served on the US Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff from 2015-2017. In that role, he advised Secretary of State John Kerry on political and security issues in the Asia-Pacific region.
