Offering the Southern Utah community an opportunity to participate in national discussions about the historical profession, Dixie State University’s History & Political Science Department and Institute of Politics are teaming up to host the second annual History Distinguished Lecture.

This year, the series will feature Dr. Lori Clune, associate professor of history at California State University, Fresno, as the distinguished lecturer. Clune will present “Cold War Diplomacy: Global Reaction to the Rosenberg Case” at 7 p.m. on Feb. 25 in the Dunford Auditorium, located in the Browning Resource Center on the Dixie State campus. Admission is free, and the public is encouraged to attend.

“DSU students and the Southern Utah community will have the opportunity to meet and learn from one of the very brightest minds in the American historical profession,” Jeremy C. Young, Dixie State assistant professor of history and director of the Institute of Politics, said.
In her lecture, Clune will address the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for the conspiracy to commit espionage. She will use global protest to shine a light on the history of Rosenberg case as an example of failed Cold War diplomacy.

“We’re thrilled to bring Dr. Clune to Southern Utah,” Young said. “She’s a talented historian with an international reputation, and she’s written the definitive book on the Rosenberg case, one of the great mysteries of the Cold War era.”

Clune, who teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the modern United States, Latin America, Southeast Asia and U.S. diplomatic history at CSU-Fresno, conducts research and analyzes the intersection of politics, diplomacy, propaganda, soft power, communism and espionage. Clune is the author of “Executing the Rosenberg: Death and Diplomacy in a Cold War World” and her most recent editorial piece, in which she called on President Trump to pardon Ethel Rosenberg, was published in the Washington Post.
A native of New York, she holds degrees from Purchase College and New York University, and earned a doctorate in history from the University of California, Davis in 2010. Her current research explores the American experience in the Korean War.

Each spring, the lecture series invites a distinguished academic historian with a substantial record of achievement and innovation in the discipline to campus to deliver a public lecture. In 2018, the university hosted its first distinguished lecturer, Dr. Susan Matt, Presidential Distinguished Professor of History at Weber State University and the author of “Homesickness: An American History.”

To learn more about the Dixie State University History & Political Science Department, visit hps.utahtech.edu, and for more information about the university’s Institute of Politics, visit politics.utahtech.edu.