Faculty Research Forum: "Bad Lieutenants" with Andrew Mertha

Description

Professor Andrew Mertha presents his new book, Bad Lieutenants: The Khmer Rouge, United Front, and Class Struggle, 1970–1997, in conversation with Professor Carla Freeman and Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs Peter M. Lewis.

Bad Lieutenants is a riveting account of how the Khmer Rouge remained a force to be reckoned with even after the fall of Democratic Kampuchea—and of the men behind the movement's strange durability.

In 1979, the Vietnamese army seized Phnom Penh, toppling Pol Pot's notoriously brutal regime. Yet the Khmer Rouge did not disintegrate. Instead, the movement continued to rule over swathes of Cambodia for almost another two decades even as it failed to become a legitimate governing organization.

Andrew Mertha argues that the Khmer Rouge's successes and failures were both driven by a refusal to dilute its revolutionary vision. Rather than take the moderate tack required for viable governance, it pivoted between only two political strategies: united front and class struggle. Through the stories of three key leaders—Ieng Sary, Son Sen, and Ta Mok—Mertha tracks the movement's shifting from one strategy to the other until its dissolution in the 1990s.

Vividly written and deeply researched, Bad Lieutenants reveals the powerful grip political ideology can have over the survival of insurgent movements.

Andrew Mertha is the George and Sadie Hyman Professor of China Studies, director of the China Studies Program, and director of the SAIS China Global Research Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). From 2019 to 2021, Mertha served as the vice dean for faculty affairs and international research cooperation at SAIS. He is formerly a professor of government at Cornell University and an assistant professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis.

Carla Freeman is senior lecturer for international affairs and director of the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins SAIS. Previously she served as a senior expert for China at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), a role that followed more than a decade as a member of the faculty and staff of Johns Hopkins SAIS. She has also been the Library of Congress Kluge Chair for China and a peace scholar at USIP. She held previous academic and nonprofit positions and was a political risk analyst for several years.

Peter Lewis is the vice dean for faculty affairs and Warren Weinstein Chair of African Studies at the Johns Hopkins SAIS. Lewis, who served as SAIS associate dean for academic and faculty affairs from 2015 to 2018, has directed the school's Africa Studies program since joining Johns Hopkins SAIS in 2006.

A light lunch will be provided.