History As It Happens

During his visit to the Middle East, President Biden explained the larger strategic purpose behind several agreements that he announced from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. "The bottom line is this trip is about once again positioning America and this region for the future. We are not going to leave a vacuum in the Middle East for Russia or China to fill,” Mr. Biden said. In his focus on thwarting foreign influence in a region where the U.S. has spent the better part of the past two decades fighting wasteful wars, there are echoes from a bygone era of American leadership. In 1979 the Greater Middle East was rocked by two seismic events whose consequences continue to shape the region’s politics and the U.S. role in it. In this episode, Bob Vitalis, an expert on Middle Eastern politics at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses the important parallels between 1979 and the geopolitical knots Mr. Biden is trying to untangle today.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the ruling affirmed a half-century of political activism by conservative grassroots organizers, religious and legal groups, and Republican politicians and strategists. Few members of this right-wing coalition were more important than the late Phyllis Schlafly, who dedicated her formidable organizing and rhetorical talents to campaigns against cultural liberalism. In this episode, historian and Schlafly biographer Donald Critchlow discusses the crusader’s legacy in light of the conservative movement’s success in ending a constitutional right to an abortion. It is a timely reminder about the importance of persuasion in politics, because although young Americans have only known the Republican Party as monolithically opposed to abortion, it took decades of work by Schlafly and like-minded activists to push the GOP further to the right.

Nearly five months since Russia invaded Ukraine, the war in the eastern Donbas region appears to be a grinding stalemate. Civilians are being pummeled by Russian missiles, but little land is changing hands. Neither side seems willing to cede an inch, so a diplomatic settlement is not in the offing. But how much longer must the war grind on before the combatants are convinced further bloodshed is pointless? In this episode, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor and Quincy Institute analyst Anatol Lieven discuss what it will take to end hostilities.

Building off recent episodes concerning U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine, this conversation seeks to understand deeper patterns in U.S. foreign policy from the dawn of the Cold War. It may be possible to understand the United States' dilemma by viewing international relations as a donor-receiver dynamic, where the donor believes they possess exclusive knowledge that must be shared with others. The question to consider is why do some people think they know what's good for others? Ithaca College political theorist Naeem Inayatullah joins the conversation.

In 1987 the Senate rejected President Reagan's nominee for the Supreme Court, Robert Bork, because his views were considered dangerously outside the mainstream. Among other things, Bork believed the Constitution did not contain a right to privacy. Today, some of Bork's ideas have been validated by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. By striking down Roe v Wade, the court killed the notion that any implied right to privacy in the Fourteenth Amendment or elsewhere in the Constitution protects access to abortion. In this episode, esteemed Yale constitutional scholar Akhil Amar traces the history of the right to privacy in the law from colonial times to the 1973 landmark ruling that the Roberts court has relegated to history.

On July 4, 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered remarks of enduring significance and American eloquence to an audience of abolitionists. He mixed condemnation of the nation's tolerance of slavery with hope and uplift. He embraced the founding fathers and defended the Constitution while attacking his fellow citizens for hypocrisy and inaction. "What, To The Slave, Is The Fourth Of July?" was quintessential Frederick Douglass. Historian James Oakes discusses the ideas behind Douglass' rhetorical tour de force, his relationship with Abraham Lincoln, and the critical importance of antislavery politics in bringing about the destruction of slavery.

As the fiftieth anniversary of the Watergate break-in crossed our calendars, the congressional committee investigating ex-President Trump's 'Stop the Steal' scheme revealed new and damaging findings. Past and present are intersecting again: the Jan. 6 hearings are painting a picture of a rogue executive willing to try almost anything to remain in power, including manipulating the Justice Department to interfere in an election. In this episode, journalist and historian Garrett Graff, the author or 'Watergate: A New History,' discusses the parallels between Nixon's crimes and Trump's effort to steal an election.

What is Vladimir Putin? Russia's dictator has been called a gangster, an autocrat, a Marxist-Leninist, an ultra-nationalist, or a fascist by different historians, political scientists, and editorialists over the past several weeks. There seems to be little agreement over what ideas and ideologies motivate the man in his crusade against the West. Fascism remains a slippery term, often used as a slur to denigrate one's political opponents. In this episode, Oxford's Roger Griffin, a leading scholar on fascism, talks about why it is mistaken to label Putin a fascist, despite some similarities to the fascist regimes of the twentieth century.

President Biden's upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia is an example of reality imposing itself on a situation Mr. Biden vowed to change. In November 2019, Democratic candidate Biden said the kingdom should be punished and treated as a pariah, because its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had been implicated in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But as Middle East expert Bob Vitalis explains in this episode, the Americans and Saudis still need each other, thereby maintaining a decades-long relationship shaped by oil, war, terrorism, and political expediency.

This conversation with Catholic University historian Michael Kimmage was featured on C-SPAN's 'American History TV.' Kimmage discusses U.S.-Russia relations since the end of the Cold War, the rise of Putin, and events leading to the war in Ukraine.