In the realm of the last man
In 1989, one year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama - then an early-career academic who had cut his teeth conducting research for Ronald Reagan during his years as California governor - delivered a conference paper that would go on to become one of the most celebrated -and controversial - works of political theory of our time: The End of History.
By 2009, he had broken with his neoconservative mentors, from Allan Bloom to Paul Wolfowitz, after recanting his support for the 'disastrous' invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the laissez-faire economics that produced the financial crash of 2008.
But why did he change his mind? In his powerful political memoir, encompassing his father's involvement in the civil rights movement and his own work on CIA contracts in the 1980s, Fukuyama analyses his life alongside the seismic political shifts of the last thirty years - from Bush to Obama to Trump, from the War on Terror to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Francis Fukuyama is the author of The End of History, The Great Disruption, Our Posthuman Future, State Building,After the Neocons, The Origins of Political Order and Political Order and Political Decay. All have been hugely influential international bestsellers, translated and published in many languages. He is Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford.
Larry Kramer has been President and Vice Chancellor of LSE since April 2024. A constitutional scholar, university administrator, and philanthropic leader, he was previously the President of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Dean of Stanford Law School.
This event was held on 2 September 2026.