Then & Now

In this week’s episode of then & now, LCHP Director Professor David N. Myers is joined by Dr. Ben Zdencanovic to discuss their collaborative work on a new LCHP report, The Challenge to University Autonomy in an Illiberal Age: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. Compiled over the past year as higher education in the U.S. faces heightened scrutiny and mounting political pressures from the U.S. government, this report situate...

In this week’s episode of then & now, LCHP Assistant Director Dr. Rose Campbell is joined by historian Dr. Neil J. Young to examine the evolution and ongoing influence of conservative Christian family values in contemporary U.S. political discourse. Neil offers a nuanced account of how ideals such as monogamy, cisgender heterosexual marriage, and rigid gender roles within a patriarchal framework became central both to conservat...

In this episode of then & now, guest host Dr. Ben Zdencanovic welcomes Professor Josh Shepperd, Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and Director of the Library of Congress Radio Preservation Task Force (RPTF). Josh, acclaimed author of Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting (University of Illinois Press, 2023), discusses the complex historical development of NPR and PBS...

In this week’s episode of then & now, we’re joined by Benjamin Nathans, Alan Charles Kors Endowed Term Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, to talk about his recent book, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement (Princeton University Press, 2024)—which was awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the 2025 Pushkin House Book Prize.
 
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In this episode of then & now, we are joined by Dr. Jamaal Muwwakkil, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA and incoming Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington, to discuss the recent rollback of affirmative action and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in American universities. Jamaal examines how these changes—set in motion by the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to end race-conscio...

In this week’s episode of then & now, LCHP Assistant Director Dr. Rose Campbell is joined by Dr. Neil J. Young—historian, podcaster, and author of Coming Out Republican (The University of Chicago Press, 2024), which traces the history of conservative and libertarian gay figures in United States history and their influence on the modern Republican Party. In this episode, Neil examines the evolving relationship between these memb...

In this week’s episode of then & now, guest host Professor Fernando Pérez-Montesinos is joined by Carlos Pérez Ricart, Assistant Professor in International Relations at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE) in Mexico City, to discuss Mexico’s Dirty War—an internal conflict from the 1960s to the 1980s between the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)-ruled government and left-wing student and guerrilla groups. A...

In this week’s episode of then & now, we present a recording of a recent panel discussion focusing on L.A. wildfires past, present, and future. This program is part of the “Why History Matters” series presented by the UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Department of History—a series dedicated to the belief that historical knowledge is an indispensable, and often missing, ingredient in public debate.

”Why History Matters: L.A....

In this week’s episode of then & now, we are joined by John Mikhail, Carroll Professor of Jurisprudence at Georgetown University Law Center, for a deep dive into the controversial theory of the unitary executive. Rooted in the Constitution’s Vesting Clause, this theory asserts that the president holds centralized control over the executive branch. While the theory has longstanding roots in constitutional debates, the Trump admi...

This week’s episode of then & now is part of an occasional series exploring the past, present, and future of U.S. foreign policy and the U.S.-led international order. Guest host Dr. Ben Zdencanovic is joined by Bruce Schulman, Professor of History at Boston University, to discuss the Trump administration’s selective use of history, especially its nods to the McKinley era’s embrace of tariffs and imperialism. President Trump’s i...

This week’s episode of then & now is part of a series co-sponsored by the L.A. History Collaborative, in which we explore the impact of the catastrophic wildfires that affected Los Angeles in early 2025. We are joined by Amy Green, Principal of Silverlake Conservation and one of Los Angeles’ most seasoned historical conservators. She discusses her efforts to preserve intricately crafted tiles from the early 20th century that ha...

In this week’s episode of then & now, we present a recording of a recent event co-sponsored by the Wende Museum and the Luskin Center for History and Policy. This event launched the Meyer and Renee Luskin Public History Program at the Wende Museum, a series made possible through the extraordinary generosity of Meyer and Renee Luskin, with a thought-provoking conversation on the role of history in shaping how we address today’s ...

This week’s episode of then & now is part of a series co-sponsored by the L.A. History Collaborative, in which we examine the effects of the devastating Los Angeles Wildfires in early 2025. Dr. Daisy Ocampo Diaz joins LCHP Assistant Director Dr. Rose Campbell to discuss the Fowler Museum’s exhibition Fire Kinship: Southern California Native Ecology and Art, one of the exhibitions associated with the Pacific Standard Time (PST) ...

This week’s episode of then & now is part of a series examining the effects of one of the most powerful and destructive natural disasters in U.S. history: the Los Angeles Wildfires. Co-sponsored by the L.A. History Collaborative— a new consortium of cultural institutions and historians committed to using the tools of history to assist in the reconstruction of the lives and stories of those deeply affected by the L.A. Wildfires—...

This week’s episode of then & now is part of an occasional series exploring the past, present, and future of U.S. foreign policy and the U.S.-led international order with guest host Dr. Ben Zdencanovic. Joined by Dr. Stephen Wertheim, Senior Fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, we critically examine the far-reaching implications for U.S. foreign policy during the second Tr...

In this week’s episode of then & now, we are joined by Dr. Isaac Stanley-Becker, a reporter on intelligence and national security issues for The Washington Post, to examine the rise and partial fall of the Schengen Zone amid ongoing and polarizing debates regarding immigration policy. Through the lens of his dual expertise as a journalist and a historian, Isaac explores the origins and historical progression of the Schengen Zon...

This week’s episode of then & now is the first in a series examining one of the most powerful and destructive natural disasters in U.S. history, the Los Angeles wildfires. Joined by Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University Stephen Pyne, one of the country’s leading thinkers about fire, we discuss the history of urban fire to understand what is unfolding in Los Angeles—where lives, communities, histories, and large swaths ...

**Content Warning: This episode includes discussion of sexual and domestic violence.


In this week’s episode of then & now, guest host Professor Jared McBride is joined by Dr. Joy Neumeyer to discuss her recent book, A Survivor’s Education. In the book, as well as this episode, Joy interweaves her own experiences of domestic abuse and the bureaucracy surrounding Title IX with Soviet and Russian history and examines...

**Content Warning: This episode includes discussion of sexual and domestic violence.
 

In this week’s episode of then & now, LCHP Assistant Director Dr. Rose Campbell is joined by Dr. Shannon Speed to discuss systemic violence against Indigenous women. According to a 2016 study, Indigenous women are 10 times more likely to be kidnapped or murdered than almost any other population group in the United States. Althoug...