As President of the Netherlands American Studies Association (NASA), it is a great pleasure for me to welcome you to the 2014 EAAS conference in The Hague (The Netherlands). As the “City of Peace and Justice,” The Hague is home to the International Criminal Court(ICC), the Institute for Global Justice, as well as the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Of the six principal organs of the United Nations, the ICJ is the only one that does not hold its meetings in New York but in The Hague’s famous Peace Palace. We hope that these surroundings will inspire lively discussions on this year’s conference topic: “America: Justice, Conflict, War.” The theme will focus in particular on the paradox inherent in the United States’s committment to the values of justice, liberty, and democracy, and the often unforeseen and problematic results of attempting to implement these values both at home and abroad – a paradox that has shaped the nation’s history domestically as well as internationally since its inception.

The 2014 EAAS conference will also mark the 60th anniversary of the EAAS, and we will celebrate this event with a total of 30 workshops as well as – for the first time in EAAS history – student panels and student poster presentations. The frame for the conference will be set by three eminent keynote speakers: Richard Carwardine (Rhodes Professor of American History, Oxford, and President of Corpus Christi College Oxford, GB); William Leahy (Director of the Office of Indigent Legal Services, New York, USA); and Willem van Genugten (Professor of International Law, Tilburg University, The Netherlands, and former Dean of The Hague’s Institute for Global Justice). In addition, the program will feature the first-hand report of a war correspondent in the former Yugoslavia and a prosecutor at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Apart from a richly filled academic program, participants will also have the opportunity to take part in a guided “Peace and Justice” tour of the city; moreover, there will be organized tours to the Peace Palace, the Humanity House, and the Yugoslavia Tribunal, as well as to a wide range of art museums and historical places in the vicinity of The Hague.

On behalf of the EAAS and NASA, I very much look forward to welcoming you in The Hague in April 2014.

Dr. Marietta Messmer,
NASA President
Senior Lecturer in the Department of American Studies
University of Groningen
The Netherlands