A U.S. scholar will explain how America must understand economic policy and political motivations to understand Russian President Vladimir Putin in a free public lecture set Monday, Nov. 7, at MTSU.

Dr. J. Arch Getty, Distinguished Professor of History at UCLA, will deliver the 2016 Strickland Visiting Scholar Lecture in History Nov. 7 at 6:30 p.m. in Room 160 of MTSU’s College of Education Building.

Getty’s free lecture, “Understanding Putin,” is open to the public. A campus map with parking notes is available at http://tinyurl.com/MTSUParkingMap.

Dr. J. Arch Getty

Getty, whose specialty is Russia’s Stalin period and the history of the Soviet Communist Party, also will meet with Department of History students and faculty during his visit to MTSU, which is coordinated by the College of Liberal Arts.

The Strickland Visiting Scholar program allows students to meet with renowned scholars whose expertise spans a variety of historical issues.

The Strickland family established the program in memory of Dr. Roscoe Lee Strickland Jr., a longtime professor of European history at MTSU and the first president of the university’s Faculty Senate.

Getty is a former Guggenheim Fellow and a Research Fellow of the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow as well as Senior Visiting Scholar at the Russian Academy of Sciences. His books include “Origin of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938” and his most recent work, “Practicing Stalinism: Bolsheviks, Boyars, and the Persistence of Tradition.”

The Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright Foundation, among others, support Getty’s research.

A reception and refreshments are planned for 5:30 p.m. Nov. 7, before Getty’s lecture.

For more information about this Strickland Visiting Scholar Lecture, please contact MTSU’s Department of History at 615-898-5798.

— Gina E. Fann (gina.fann@mtsu.edu)