Professor Thomas Ambrosio was awarded the Faculty Lectureship Award for his teaching and research regarding what he calls “The New New World Order” Tuesday, Apr. 17.

The award recognizes achievement in teaching, scholarship, creative activity and service. The recipient of the award is invited to share their expertise in a lecture for faculty and students at the award ceremony.

In his presentation, Ambrosio spoke about how after World War II and the Cold War, the United States became the largest superpower in the world, but now those dynamics are changing.

“It is clear the world is changing,” Ambrosio said. “And from America’s perspective, not for the better.”

Ambrosio said that this will have serious repercussions for America’s place in the world, its foreign policy and the stability of the international system.

“So we take all of this into consideration: imperial overstretch, rising of opposing great powers, greater challenges by rogue states, a more complicated conflicted international system and the decline of the powerful liberal democracy,” Ambrosio said.

Ambrosio said many things regarding the new world order could be tracked back to what some people believe to be the beginning of the Cold War in 1947. He said it was then when the United States started to extensively reach into the politics of other countries.

“Two generations grew up during this war between east and west, communism and capitalism, between the Soviet Union and the Untied States,” Ambrosio said.

Ambrosio said that because of this, all of America’s foreign policy, created during that time and after, was filtered through that lens so being involved in other countries has been a way of life in America.

Of the countries that have had revolutions to implement democracy, Ambrosio said only one of them has really made a switch to increase their level of democracy.

“All the Arab regimes that have had these protests have either collapsed, like Libya, with the help of the Untied States, Syria and Yemen, or they actually strengthened their authoritarian regimes as we saw in Egypt where the president won with 97 percent of the votes,” Ambrosio said.

At the end of Ambrosio’s lecture, North Dakota State President Dean Bresciani and Provost Beth Ingram congratulated him with a plaque and said some words recognizing Ambrosio for his work as a professor in the political science department.

“Tom is a great example of why we work at research universities,” Ingram said.