Political philosopher Hannah Arendt famously argued - in the case of SS officer Adolf Eichmann - that ordinary people can easily become complicit in evil acts as part of a larger system of injustice and inequality. In this special episode, we discuss the concept of "the banality of evil" with Robin Kelley, prominent scholar and professor of U.S. and African American History. As protests spread across the country over the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many more, P...
Jul 12, 2021•49 min
This week’s episode features Stephen Aron, outgoing UCLA historian and incoming CEO of the Autry Museum of the American West. Dr. Aron discussed the origins and persistence of the idea of the Western “frontier” in the American imagination, his approach to cultural “convergence” in the West, and his vision for the Autry Museum’s role in Los Angeles and the West today.
Jun 29, 2021•42 min•Season 1Ep. 46
As California lifts longtime public health restrictions and life in parts of the United States begin returning to a semblance of pre-pandemic normalcy, it is important to recall the unfolding crises of the past 15 months. In this episode, UCLA Historian Peter Baldwin, author of the recent book Fighting the First Wave: Why the Coronavirus was Tackled So Differently Across the Globe , looks back on the past year and offers intriguing historical insight into why some countries were more effective a...
Jun 14, 2021•52 min•Season 1Ep. 45
This special three-part episode of Then & Now features three experts in Middle East history and politics who examine multiple dimensions of the recent outbreak of violence in Israel and Palestine. Their incisive analysis provides listeners with a thorough overview of the historical context, political consequences, and potential impact on future peace in Israel-Palestine. The first segment features Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, who exa...
May 27, 2021•1 hr 29 min•Season 1Ep. 44
UCLA undergraduate students Firyal Bawab and Mariam Aref Mahmoud and graduate student Phil Hoffman join Then & Now to discuss their forthcoming report on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. They track the historical effects of American “soft” or "non-military" foreign policy in the Middle East on regional governments and economies over time, including the consequences of neoliberalism in Egypt and Jordan. They also share their experiences conducting research with the Luskin Center for Hi...
May 17, 2021•52 min•Season 1Ep. 43
On January 6, 2021, hundreds of far-right protestors, many of them wearing white nationalist clothing and insignia, stormed the U.S. Capitol building. On February 16, UCLA student Christian Secor was arrested for his participation in the riot. In response to these developments, the Luskin Center for History and Policy released a report on white nationalism at UCLA titled “ From Student Politics Capitol Insurrection: The Intensification of Extremism at UCLA and Beyond ,” as a follow-up to prior r...
May 03, 2021•53 min•Season 1Ep. 42
Henry Kissinger is arguably one of the most important and controversial contemporary figures in U.S. foreign policy. As a former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor during the Nixon and Ford Administrations, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, and an accused war criminal, Kissinger is both revered and reviled. This week on Then & Now UCLA History Professor Kevin Kim interviews Vanderbilt University Professor Thomas Alan Schwartz on his recent book, Henry Kissinger and American...
Apr 19, 2021•39 min•Season 1Ep. 41
From his childhood in Essaouira, Morocco, to his adolescence involved in Marxist politics, to his time as a successful banker in Paris, to his advocacy for peace and cross cultural understanding as senior advisor to two Moroccan kings, André Azoulay has lived an extraordinary life. He joins Then & Now in conversation with LCHP Director David Myers and Professor Aomar Boum (UCLA Department of Anthropology), to discuss his personal path, the importance of cultural connection and identity, his ...
Apr 05, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 40
Anti-Asian sentiment and violence has spiked dramatically over the last year. Most recently on March 16, a mass shooting in Atlanta, Georgia took the lives of eight people, six of whom were Asian women. UCLA Professors David Yoo and Karen Umemoto join this special episode of Then & Now to discuss this disturbing trend and situate it in the context of race and racism in American society. They discuss policies that have stigmatized and excluded Asian Americans, the development of the “AAPI” ca...
Mar 29, 2021•47 min•Season 1Ep. 39
Months after the national election and despite numerous judicial decisions to the contrary, many Americans still believe the election was stolen from Donald Trump. In recent weeks various state legislatures have used the claim of voter fraud to propose new bills to change voting procedures, launching a new chapter in the long battle over the franchise in the United States. In this episode of "Then & Now," we discuss the history of voter suppression and the current state of play with election...
Mar 15, 2021•50 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Higher education institutions in the United States can be seen as both bastions of liberalism and conservatism, as the realm of both radicals and establishmentarians. Eddie Cole, associate professor of higher education and organizational change at UCLA and author of The Campus Color Line: College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom addresses this seeming contradiction. He discusses the dual nature of the university, as well as the role played by college presidents in moving their insti...
Mar 01, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 37
In 2019, Anthea M. Hartig made headlines when she became the first woman director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. Since then, she has been a fierce advocate for public history in the nation’s capital. Join us for this President's Day episode as we learn about how Hartig, a UCLA alumna, fell in love with history, developed a rich and challenging approach to the past, and sees history as a key to navigating the present.
Feb 15, 2021•59 min•Season 1Ep. 36
A recent LATimes investigation found that about 67% of the homeless population in Los Angeles County has either a mental illness or a substance abuse disorder. Yet, Dr. Jonathan Sherin wrote in a December op-ed , mental health policies are failing those who most need services. Dr. Sherin, the director of the LA County Department of Mental Health, joins Then & Now this week to discuss this challenge. He sits down with Dr. Kirsten Moore-Sheeley and Jessica Richards, two authors of LCHP’s forth...
Feb 01, 2021•38 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Between a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol and the catastrophic surge of COVID-19 across the country, the beginning of 2021 has been even more turbulent than 2020. This special episode of Then & Now, recorded on Martin Luther King Day and released on Inauguration Day, features Robin D. Kelley, prominent UCLA scholar on U.S. and African American history. He looks at the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as fascism and white nationalism throughout U.S. history, in framing our cur...
Jan 20, 2021•55 min•Season 1Ep. 34
This week’s episode features UCLA PhD candidates Phil Hoffman (History), Lily Hindy (History), and Monica Widmann (Political Science), who have been spearheading a long-term research project with LCHP examining American soft power in the Middle East. They discuss their new report “Skewed Recovery: Minority Assistance Programs to Iraq in Historical Perspective,” which details the ways in which Western powers have historically distributed foreign aid unevenly and according to their political inter...
Jan 11, 2021•52 min•Season 1Ep. 33
As we come to the end of an historic year, Then & Now examines one unfortunate statistic: the rise in hate crimes and hate incidences in Los Angeles County and across the country. Robin Toma, the Executive Director of the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, joins us to discuss the development of "hate crime" as a legal category, the ways government agencies have historically responded to hatred, and current efforts at curbing hate in Los Angeles. He also discusses the Commission’s...
Dec 28, 2020•47 min•Season 1Ep. 32
Despite losing the national election, Donald Trump continues to exercise total control over the Republican party. Tens of millions of voters supported him, and most prominent Republican leaders still refuse to acknowledge the results of the election. How did we get here? How did Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and the election of Barack Obama lay the groundwork for Trumpism? As we head into a new presidential administration, what is the future of the Republican party? Mike Murphy, a Republican polit...
Dec 14, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 31
UCLA researchers and graduate students Marques Vestal, Fernanda Jahn Verri, and Andrew Klein join Then & Now to discuss the Luskin Center for History and Policy's forthcoming report detailing the history of the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles County. They discuss how the last century of housing policy, racial dynamics, and policing practices all contributed to the crisis we find ourselves in today. This is the first episode in a series covering the report findings. To be the first to read...
Nov 30, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 30
As a follow-up to our last pre-election episode, Professor Lynn Vavreck and Zev Yaroslavsky return to "Then & Now," joined by Professor Lorrie Frasure, to analyze the 2020 election results. They discuss a range of key topics: President Trump’s refusal to concede, the persistence of divided electorates in U.S. history, the political behavior of white men, the performance and reliability of polling, and the question of whether American democracy is dying. Lorrie Frasure is an Associate Profess...
Nov 17, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 29
Two of the country's -- and UCLA’s -- keenest observers of electoral politics, Lynn Vavreck and Zev Yaroslavsky, join Then & Now to discuss their take on the 2020 election in light of the previous two elections. Lynn Vavreck is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics and Public Policy at UCLA, a contributing columnist to The Upshot at The New York Times, and the author or co-author of five books on electoral politics. Zev Yaroslavsky is the Executive Director of the LA Initiativ...
Oct 29, 2020•54 min•Season 1Ep. 28
From Frances Harper to Michelle Obama, Black women have faced countless forms of violent aggression at the intersection of racism and sexism. Professor Koritha Mitchell, Literary Historian and Professor of English at Ohio State University, discusses the way these women define and redefine success in the face of this violence, challenging us to see their lives not just through the lens of protest, but through the lens of perseverance and achievement as well. Her book, From Slave Cabins to the Whi...
Oct 19, 2020•34 min•Season 1Ep. 27
This special episode on October 12th marks 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 United States. He discusses moments of historical conflict and collaboration between the two co...
Oct 12, 2020•41 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Los Angeles is infamous for its ubiquitous, sprawling, and congested roads and freeways. Whether driving south on the 405 freeway in the morning, east on Olympic Boulevard in the afternoon, or north on Vermont Avenue in the evening, bumper to bumper traffic defines our streets. But has traffic in Los Angeles always looked this way? What policy efforts have city leaders pursued over the years to alleviate traffic? And what can we learn from history to make it better? Noted traffic expert Martin W...
Oct 05, 2020•46 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Whether watching the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, reading two different news sites, or merely glancing at any given Twitter feed, one might think that Americans across the country live in alternate universes. As the 2020 election approaches, political polarization has reached a boiling point. Dr. Carolyn Lukensmeyer, a nationally renowned expert in deliberative democracy and Executive Director Emerita of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, joins Then & Now producer...
Sep 21, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 24
As the United States continues to experience a national reckoning with its long history of racial inequality, so too a debate has taken hold in the Jewish community about where and whether Jews of Color fit into the communal mainstream. This episode features Devin Naar, Isaac Alhadeff Professor of Sephardic Studies at the University of Washington, who sheds light on this question through the lens of Sephardic Jewish history. He challenges the imposed racial categorization of Jews in the United S...
Sep 08, 2020•48 min•Season 1Ep. 23
As we near the start of the 2020-21 academic year at UCLA, Then & Now will be moving to a biweekly schedule. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and to sign up for our emails, to hear about all the great work coming out of the Luskin Center for History and Policy.
Aug 31, 2020•1 min
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which granted and protects women’s right to vote. As we mark this centennial during an election year, UCLA Historian Ellen Dubois, one of the preeminent scholars of the movement for women’s suffrage and author of “ Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote " (2020), joins us to reflect on the Amendment's legacy. She discusses the tactics suffragists used to advocate for the vote, the political o...
Aug 24, 2020•45 min•Season 1Ep. 22
The Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution prevents the government from inflicting "cruel and unusual punishment” on those accused or convicted of a crime. Yet California’s prisons have been overcrowded, rife with violence, and lacking basic healthcare provisions for decades. In the era of COVID-19, this context translates to an infection and death rate well above that of the general population. Governor Gavin Newsom recently announced the early release of thousands of prisoners from...
Aug 17, 2020•54 min•Season 1Ep. 21
In the wake of the unprecedented election of President Donald Trump, and now punctuated by the COVID-19 pandemic and summer of protests, many scholars and public figures have argued that the U.S. is descending into autocracy. Following the recent violent intervention of federal law enforcement officers in Portland, concerns about the state of America’s democracy have grown . Samuel Moyn, historian and Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale University, and Vera Eidelman, staff attorney ...
Aug 10, 2020•54 min•Season 1Ep. 20
What are the roots of mass deportation and incarceration, and what do the two have to do with each other? How can studying these histories allow us to confront and dismantle the racist structures at the center of today’s national conversation? Professor Kelly Lytle Hernández — UCLA historian, activist, author, and recent recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Prize — shares her insights on these vital questions on this week’s episode of Then & Now. She discusses the foundational role of whit...
Aug 03, 2020•53 min•Season 1Ep. 19
