Pardee Center’s IHI Hosts Northern Ireland Scholar for Lectures on Brexit
During the week of April 04, 2022, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future‘s International History Institute (IHI) hosted Dr. Michael Potter – a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Ethnic Conflict at Queen’s University Belfast and a member of the Research Service of the Northern Ireland Assembly – for several lectures on Northern Ireland.
On April 5, 2022, Potter gave a lecture at the Pardee School titled “Brexit and Northern Ireland: Are New Troubles on the Way?” In this talk, he provided background information on the situation in Northern Ireland and explained how Brexit created significant political difficulties for the country as it shares an open land border with the Republic of Ireland, a European Union (EU) member. By the terms of the Good Friday Belfast Agreement of 1998, that border is to remain open. As he noted, this part of the agreement was fairly easy to manage when Ireland and the United Kingdom were both EU members. By withdrawing from the EU, the U.K. government decided to establish a new customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the region (England, Scotland, and Wales), much to the consternation of Unionists in Northern Ireland, who, as a result, feel like second class U.K citizens.
Potter also gave guest lectures and visited with students in seminars taught by Professors Cathal Nolan, Joe Wippl, and John Woodward. In these seminars, Potter discussed the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the period from 1968 to 1998 when there was much political violence between nationalist and unionist paramilitaries. He explained the civil rights movement and protests in Northern Ireland in 1968 in the context of global developments of the time, including the civil rights struggle in the United States, the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, the Prague Spring, and the Paris protests. He also discussed the role the intelligence services and military played during the conflict.
The International History Institute at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future was founded within Boston University’s College of Arts & Sciences (CAS) in 1999 to promote the importance of history in understanding international cultural, economic, political, and military affairs. IHI has been interdisciplinary since its founding, advocating a broad approach that welcomes all scholars who seek to understand the present and future as rooted in an appreciation of the abiding influence of the past. It embraces any who work within and across disciplines, while engaging policy questions and interests of the attentive public. Learn more about the Institute and its upcoming events on the Pardee Center’s website.