Then & Now

In the wake of more horrific mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, the United States finds itself yet again engaged in a morbid ritual of horror and grief, thoughts and prayers, and renewed calls for gun control. Last week, the National Rifle Association held its annual convention, during which it steadfastly opposed calls to limit access to guns.

But it has not always been that way.  The NRA, in earlier decades, supported restrict...

The student debt crisis in the United States has reached record highs, totaling about $1.75 trillion from 45 million borrowers. As millions of Americans await President Biden’s decision about whether to forgive at least part of this debt, Then & Now asks: how did we get to this staggering figure? How did past policy decisions pave the way for this crisis, and how and why have these decisions had a disproportionate impact on Bla...

The international community has widely condemned Russia’s war on Ukraine and has placed increasing pressure on Russia to withdraw. But what more can it do? What legal mechanisms and levers of pressure are available to the international community, and how effective are they? How did the current international legal order (including the definitions of genocide and crimes against humanity) come into being, and how did it evolve over ti...

In this special episode, Cary Franklin returns Then & Now for a follow-up conversation about abortion rights in the U.S., in light of the leaked Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe vs. Wade  (listen to part 1 here). Listen to Professor Franklin,  Faculty Director of the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy and  of the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, discuss the far-reaching implications of the leaked opini...

On April 29, 1992, three LAPD officers were acquitted after brutally beating Rodney King, and a fourth was let off with no verdict. Widespread protests erupted in response, a result of deep-seated anger with police violence and racial inequality in Los Angeles, heightened by the murder of teenager Latasha Harlins a year prior.  Five days later, the city of Los Angeles stood in a shocked, smoldering state with more than sixty people...

On March 6th, 2022, the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy, in partnership with the USC Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life and the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, hosted the final installment of a three-part series focused on “Breaking the Deadlock” in Israel-Palestine.

The aim of this series is to bring together leading scholars, thinkers, and policy-makers—each with different...

This episode features a conversation with the UCLA graduate and undergraduate students who authored a new LCHP report exploring the history of both racism and the quest for racial justice at UCLA. The report and conversation examine the experience of students of color throughout the university's history, as well as examples of the individuals and movements that led the fight for racial justice at UCLA. This conversation feature...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shocked and perplexed the world. UCLA Historian Jared McBride joins Then & Now for the third conversation in a mini-series examining this invasion through a historical lens. Professor McBride discusses the history of far-right nationalism in Ukraine from World War II until now, situating both Ukraine’s election of a Jewish president and Putin’s claims of “denazification,” within a historical fra...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shocked and perplexed the world. This special two-part episode of Then & Now features two outstanding historical observers: Benjamin Nathans, Alan Charles Kors Endowed Term Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, and J. Arch Getty, Distinguished Research Professor of History at UCLA, offer much needed background and perspective on Russia's actions.  Professors Natha...

This week's episode features the recording of Part 2 of the three part webinar series organized by the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy in partnership with the USC Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life and the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. This innovative series brings together scholars, thinkers, and policy-makers of different visions to reflect on the current impasse in...

LCHP Student Research Fellows and Geography Ph.D. students Sammy Feldblum and John Schmidt join Then & Now to discuss their new LCHP research report, The Transformation of Academic Labor: Past as Prologue at the University of California. Their research details the various factors leading to the UC’s increased reliance on contingent, non-tenured faculty lecturers over the past decades. They discuss the increased privatization of...

In honor of Black History Month and in the midst of the Winter Olympics, we revisit this episode on the "Black Athlete" that originally aired on July 6, 2020.

From Jack Johnson to Muhammed Ali, from Tommie Smith to Colin Kaepernick, Black athletes have played a huge role in the social and cultural history of the 20th and 21st centuries.  Ben Carrington, sociologist at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism...

On October 21, 2021, cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed by a live round of ammunition fired by actor Alec Baldwin on the set of the movie Rust. Her death has prompted numerous discussions about what constitutes “safety” while working on a film set. Dr. Kate Fortmueller, Assistant Professor of Entertainment and Media Studies at the University of Georgia, examines the evolution of these discussions - and the evolution of gene...

This wide-ranging conversation features Professor Mishuana Goeman, Professor of Gender Studies and American Indian Studies, and the inaugural Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs at UCLA. Professor Goeman discusses her personal journey into interdisciplinary scholarship, the relationship and tensions between academia and community-centered work, and the many tangible steps universities and oth...

Professor Manisha Shah, Franklin D. Gilliam Chair in Social Justice and director of the Global Lab for Research in Action at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, joins Then & Now producer Maia Ferdman in conversation about the long history of policy approaches to sex work. They discuss the motivations behind the prohibition and regulation of sex work as well as their public health and economic implications. They also discu...

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which addresses the constitutionality of a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks. This case is the latest in a decades-long legal battle over the legality of abortion access, which may culminate in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case affirming a woman's right to an abortion. Profes...

This week's episode features the recording of the three part webinar series organized by the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy in partnership with the USC Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life and the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. This innovative series brings together scholars, thinkers, and policy-makers of different visions to reflect on the current impasse in Israel-Pa...

This revisited episode originally aired on October 12th, 2020, marking Indigenous Peoples Day. Professor Kyle T. Mays, historian and scholar of Afro-Indigenous studies, urban history, and Indigenous popular culture at UCLA, joins Then & Now to discuss the history and significance of the day, as well as his scholarship tracking the parallel and often intersecting histories of Indigenous and African American communities in the Un...

In recent months, there has been a raging debate over whether the state--or private actors--can require vaccine mandates.  Some resisters claim that such a mandate stands in opposition to their religious liberty; others maintain that the state should not have this authority.  Where did vaccine mandates--and the fierce resistance to them--come from?  Dorit Reiss, Professor of Law and James Edgar Hervey ’50 Chair of Litigation at UC ...