Annotations for Speakers: Jeremi Suri

Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy. Today’s episode. We’re going to focus upon young John F. Kennedy and the lessons and insights from his early career for our somewhat difficult and partisan political moment today. What can we learn? And what do we take away from John F. Kennedy’s early career? We have with us his biographer, who is a very distinguished historian and good friend and someone who’s written quite a lot about American foreign policy, American politics and the lessons of history for contemporary affairs. This is Fred Logevall. Uh, Fred. Good morning.

It’s our pleasure to have you. Fred is the author of 10 books. He’s the author and editor of 10 books on American politics and Foreign Policy. Among my favorites and those which I know everyone has read, uh, choosing war, the Lost Chance for peace and the escalation of war in Vietnam, which really transformed our understanding of Lyndon Johnson’s choices for war in 1964 65 America’s Cold war. The Politics of Insecurity, which Fred co wrote with Campbell Craig, another historian, which looks at the influence of domestic politics on American Cold War foreign policy. Members of war. The Fall of an Empire in the Making of America’s Vietnam, which is really about early French and American activities in Vietnam. Before we would, we traditionally called the Vietnam War in the United States. Embers of War won the Pulitzer Prize as well as many other rewards and then his most recent book, which I hope all of our listeners will read and I know you’ll be reading a lot about soon as well.

Embers of War, The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam, which is really about early French and American activities in Vietnam before what we traditionally call the Vietnam War in the United States. Embers of War won the Pulitzer Prize as well as many other awards. And then his most recent book, which I hope all of our listeners will read and I know you'll be reading a lot about soon as well, JFK, Coming of Age in the American Century.

When Fred is not busy scribbling, he is the Lawrence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Professor of History at Harvard University. And as I said, Fred is a longtime friend and really a major figure, not just in historical circles, but in scholarly and public intellectual circles in the United States. So before we turn to our discussion of JFK and this really fantastic and fun new book, I really found it fun to read this new book that Fred has just published.

We're going to turn to Mr. Zachary, as we always do each week, for his scene-setting poem. Zachary, what's the title of your poem? The Ghost of JFK. Oh, I'm a little scared now.

Let's hear about The Ghost of JFK.

My poem is really about trying to ask what made JFK such a symbolic figure in American history and what made him so important in the memory of his generation, even only having served a few years as president.

Well, that is the perfect spot to turn to President Kennedy's biographer. Fred, we live in such a cynical age. Your book, as I read it, is in some ways a wonderful antidote to that cynicism. I think the place to start is why did John F. Kennedy, this person born to such privilege, such wealth, why did he get involved in the dirty world of politics? Well, let me just say, Jeremy, that that was a wonderful poem we just heard. That was just marvelous.

Well, and let's turn to his wartime service. Much of your book actually covers that. And I have to say, it's a really riveting part of the book and an area where I think you have a lot of new, many new things to say about both his wartime service and his travels.

I was really taken with the many quotations you have from his travel diary, Fred. So tell us more about how the travels and the World War II experience contributed to his development as a political animal.

I hear we've gone almost 10 minutes into this discussion. It's the first time Joseph Kennedy has come up. What can you tell us about that relationship between father and son?

Really interesting. And let's talk a little bit about JFK's distinctiveness from his father, his critique of appeasement, his critique of the isolationism, and even somewhat pro-Nazi tendencies of his father. How would you characterize his emerging, shall we say, Cold War viewpoint?

So it's fascinating to me, Fred, how that lesson for John F. Kennedy and so many others, and this is something many of us have written about you in particular, how those lessons of appeasement carry forward. And of course, one of the things both you and I teach and write about are the dangers of an analogy from one historical time being brought into another context.

Can you say more about what Kennedy takes from what you just described so well, his emerging internationalist outlook? You called it earlier a liberal internationalist outlook to some extent, tempered with realism.

Over more than 100 episodes, we've seen, I think, in such a range of figures, how important those precise qualities that you just highlighted so brilliantly, that those qualities of compromise and attention to evidence and deliberative policymaking, how crucial they are to a democracy. How did Lyndon Johnson interact with John F. Kennedy? Because one of the issues that comes up quite often in some of our prior discussions and in a lot of the scholarship, as you know better than anyone, is this rivalry between Lyndon Johnson and the Kennedy family.

How did JFK handle that differently from politicians today, and what can we learn from that? Well, I mean, you know, I'd say in some respects, I guess, a preliminary answer, Jeremy, because this is one of the things that I really want to delve into and will need to delve into in volume two.

I want us to close as we always do by looking toward our listeners today, particularly young listeners, and what they can take away from your book in this fraught political moment we're in today. But before I do that, Fred, I can't let us get to that concluding point without asking the question I know everyone is going to ask you. What should we make of Kennedy's extramarital affairs that you discuss a bit in the book and the question of morality and political leadership?

It strikes me that you're approaching it exactly as you should as a historian, which is different from a journalist in this element, insofar as his personal behavior matters to us, it seems to me, as it relates to his role as a politician. Your book is Young JFK, his own man, but politician.

And so, you know, if people are interested in the lurid details of his affairs, that's not what you're writing about. You are writing about how those affected him as an individual insofar as he becomes a politician.

I think it's actually refreshing in a certain way without in any way diminishing the enormity of this issue, as you just pointed out so well. So, Fred, we like to finish every one of our episodes by really, really speaking directly to our audience, which includes a lot of young people, and I'll include you and I as still young people, who are concerned about our world today, concerned about democracy.

We do it every week because we're trying to bring historical knowledge and at least maybe some historical inspiration to thinking about reforming and improving our democracy in a nonpartisan way.

You've spent a good part of your life now writing about John F. Kennedy. You're going to continue doing that. What do you want young people, people who are concerned about our politics today, people who want to change our politics today, what do you want them to take away from the work you've done and from this wonderful volume?

So Zachary, your wonderful poem this morning was the ghost of JFK. And one of the early reviewers of Fred’s book mutual friend of Ours, David Kennedy talks about how how John F. Kennedy still beguiles us and that in some ways Fred's book is a wonderful analysis of that Zachary Does John F. Kennedy still inspire young people like yourself? And what inspiration do you take from this? And from our conversation with Fred?

Well, I think that's a perfect spot for us to come on, Fred, Did you wanna make the last comment on that

That's so well said. And I think what your book displays really in wonderful ways in entertaining ways to Fred is that we have that capacity within us. It's it's John F. Kennedy is his own man. But John F. Kennedy as such a quintessential product of American society, product of the mixing of different groups and our politics, which produces this messiness but also this capacity for compromise and evidence based creativity. So, Fred, thank you for joining us today. I know you're very busy out and around, or at least virtually on your book tour. Thank you for stopping. Stopping in with us virtually. I hope all of our readers and listeners will read, uh, Fred's exciting new book, John F. Kennedy. It's available, Um, on Amazon. It's available at all of your local independent bookstores. Just look up logo ball JFK, and it will come right up. Zachary, Thank you, as always for your poem and most of all, thank you to our listeners for joining us for this episode of This Is Democracy

Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy. This week we have with us one of the foremost scholars, philosophers, and public intellectuals in the world, writing about a topic that's very close to us. I think every day, where history matters for us every day, which is how we think about memory and the ways in which memories of the past, particularly memories of a traumatic, guilt ridden, difficult past, the ways those memories are used or not used to improve or limit our democracy. In other words, what is the role for historical memory in addressing past injustices?

Susan Neiman, who is our guest today. Susan has written some of the most important work on this. She is the director of the Einstein Forum in Berlin. She was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and that's central to a lot of her work. But she studied philosophy at Harvard and the Freie Universität in Berlin, was a professor of philosophy at Yale and Tel Aviv University before moving to Berlin, moving back to Berlin for the Einstein Forum. She is the author of numerous books of contemporary philosophy and political philosophy as well, a number that I just like to mention, Evil and Modern Thought, particularly relevant, perhaps to our world today. Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists, I'm not sure that I'm a grown up idealist, but at least give one a try.

Thank you, Susan, that makes me feel a lot better. And her most recent book, the book that's really going to be at the center of our discussion today, which is really a phenomenal book. Both Zachary and I have read it: Learning from the Germans' Race and the Memory of Evil. It has just come out, in paperback, with a brand new final section, at least for now, on the Black Lives Matter movement, and how it relates to Susan's really in depth discussion of historical memory in Germany and the United States over the last century.

Susan, thank you for joining us today. It's a pleasure. Before we turn to our discussion, as always, we have our scene-setting poem from Mr. Zachary Suri and today's poem is actually a bilingual poem from Zachary. This is the first of your bilingual poems in one hundred and twenty or so [episodes], I think. Zachary, what is the title of your poem?

That was really powerful. Very powerful. I think you should translate that last section for us and tell us what your poem's about.

It evokes a little bit of T.S. Eliot, right? Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

It is. You know, I'm glad you mentioned that, Susan. I read it years ago. I'm going to go back and find it when we're done and maybe put it up on the website with the link to your book. That's really, really wonderful. Susan, building on Zachary's poem and the sort of haunting elements of memory, maybe you can take us through a little bit about why you wrote this book, Learning from the Germans. It's a deep, thoughtful, intellectual book, but it's also a very personal book, which I loved.

Yes.

Well, and I have to say, I first became aware of your book [when] it had just come out and I think I had read a review of it, but I was at a meeting of the World War Two Museum, the National World War Two Museum in New Orleans, where I'm on the board. And we were talking about memories of World War Two.

And it was, it became so evident to me as we were planning a conference on World War Two memory, how little Americans have thought critically about our own war experience. And that's in no way to trash the experience of the United States in World War Two, but how much more advanced German thinking was on this. And this is a theme that resonates, I think, in your book.

Why is it that around many of these issues, the Germans have seemingly done more thinking about this, more of the work of addressing the dark and embarrassing and traumatic parts of their history than Americans? Why is that?

Well, there's several, several reasons for, you know, we can give several reasons. One is, I don't know if it's OK to swear on your podcast or not. [Laughter] Go ahead.

Yes.

Yep.

I can imagine. Yes.

I agree.

Of course. [Inaudible] Well, there is for a long time it wasn't even in our scholarship. I mean, you could be a scholar of American history without addressing these issues until, you know, 30 years ago.

I mean, I just made that up as a counterpart to Johnny Reb. Yes. What there are are thousands of memorials to both victims and the few resistance heroes that there were. All of that is part of Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung.

So Susan, this is such a powerful narrative that you put together here, and it is so compelling because it's thoughtful and you draw out interviews with major figures. You've mentioned Brian Stevenson and many others on the German side and the American side. We always like to close our podcast episode, Susan, with a forward looking, hopeful denouement.

What do you take from this about the possibilities going forward? I think Americans are maybe at least a younger generation. It seems to me, and I find this certainly with my students, are much more open to talking about a lot of these issues than my students were even 10 years ago.

So what do you see as the positive pathway forward for us taking into account your analysis of historical memory and the uses and misuses of it?

Right.

That's so powerful. Susan, I loved how you closed the book in what you called, "in place of conclusions." Because there is no conclusion to this story, where you talk about how in your words, "I gave tribalism a try," right? But then you say it surprised me. I had a little whiplash at the end. I didn't expect that from you. And then you said, this book itself is offered as an exercise in universalism in the hope that understanding difference will help us to find shared souls.

Zachary, this book obviously moved you. We read a lot together, but I think you really were moved by this. Why did it move you? And do you think that Susan's plea for universalism will resonate with your generation?

And reading your books, Susan, it certainly felt not just like reading an exploration in memory and history, but also an exploration and redemption. What you're talking about is the most hopeful thing, right?

How democratic societies offer the possibility for redemption because this is a theme of our podcast. Weekend and week out. Democracy is about no finality. Democracy denies that there's an end to history. There's no perfect template, and we're not looking to create the perfect man and woman, we're looking to constantly remake ourselves for our times to come.

It's a constant rebuilding or in the Jewish tradition, Ledor Vador, from generation to generation. And, I think your book really captures that so well.

Thank you for joining us from Berlin today for this discussion.

I hope you will.

And Zachary, thank you, as always for a moving poem in two languages this time. You keep outdoing yourself every week and most of all, thank you to our listeners. And I do want to encourage everyone to pick up a copy of Susan's book. It's now in paperback, Learning from the Germans. The title, very easy to remember.

This is Democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics, and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next. Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy.

This week we are going to discuss a perennial topic of congressional politics and a perennial debate within our democracy, one that's becoming perhaps more important than it's been in a long time. The question of whether the U.S. Senate should continue to have a rule for a filibuster, which allows a minority, a small minority, in the Senate to prevent legislation and other matters from moving forward.

This is, as I said, an age-old question. It's central to American legislation in American politics, and we're very fortunate to have with us one of the leading scholars of Congress in general, and this topic, among many others.

My friend and colleague, Sean Theriault. Good morning, Sean. Good morning, Jeremi. Sean is a professor in the Department of Government here at the University of Texas at Austin. As I said, he is an internationally recognized, widely published author and speaker on the various pathologies of the U. S. Congress. Sean has written five outstanding books, many of which have won awards.

He began his illustrious career with the book The Power of the People, appropriately titled for a Scholar of Congress. I guess that's the aspiration of Congress more than the reality. He then published a really prescient book in 2008: Party Polarization in Congress, then another book that I really enjoyed reading. I read this book on the prize committee years ago–The Gingrich Senators–really, one of the best books at explaining how Newt Gingrich and his generation transformed the U. S. Congress.

And then more recently, The Great Broadening. And just this last year, a really important book for educating all of us about these topics, Congress: The First Branch. Sean also writes widely in every major newspaper. He appears on all kinds of news shows.

We could call you, Sean, Mr. Congress. How does that sound?

I'll take that moniker, although Congress isn't so popular these days, Jeremi. [Laughter] Yeah, well, I think it's safe to say, Sean, you are more popular than Congress. Thanks, Jeremi.

Before our conversation with Sean, as always, we have our scene setting poem from Mr. Zachary Suri.

Zachary, what is the title of your poem today?

With a single speech.

Zachary, that's lovely. What is your poem about?

You're not the first guest to say that. So you should listen to your guests, Jeremi. How dare you sucker punch us off! [laughter]

And Sean, before we talk about how this filibuster actually works, why is it there?

It's not mentioned in the Constitution, of course. So how did we get this archaic institution?

Yeah, so right. I'll give you a common person's understanding of how it came to exist, and I'm a storyteller, Jeremi. This is the reason I think my students pay attention—You're a great storyteller—on occasion.

So like Lin Manuel Miranda's play. I mean, Aaron Burr is the villain, in a sense here, right?

Right. It's extraordinary, though, Sean, isn't it? That as vice president, he had that much enduring power on the way the Senate operates.

Right, and this is actually a really good lesson for the Senate. Right? So this is a precedent that is set early, and the Senate really cares about precedent. And so, a decision that they make kind of just because they never used this thing, ends up having these huge ramifications that we continue to feel throughout the next two-hundred plus years of history. It's a really important lesson in path dependence, how a decision made early has enduring effects, as you say.

How does the filibuster work, Sean?

Sean, as a scholar of Congress who studied this, I think, closer than pretty much anyone else, what have been the moments when the filibuster has actually built consensus?

That's the argument it seems to me you're making. At certain moments. It forces a party with fifty-two to actually reach out and find those on the other side, at least eight of them to go along with things. And one could see, in theory, the value in that.

So what moments do you see as the moments when this has been a source of consensus building?

It's a great point. And you can see that certainly, with the civil rights legislation that you mentioned going back to the ‘57 [Civil Rights] Act, that Lyndon Johnson, as Senate majority leader, muscles his way through. And then, of course, the ‘64 Civil Rights Act and the ‘65 Voting Rights Act. What's striking about those examples, Sean, which are terrific examples, is that, you're right, the legislation gains more permanence from having to go through the filibuster threshold.

But historians, I think, would argue, [it] took much longer to get that legislation. And Jim Crow, and of course, before that, slavery, last a lot longer than they might have otherwise because of the filibuster, so you can see both sides. Would you agree with that?

How does an effective majority leader do this?

I mean, what do we learn from someone like Lyndon Johnson?

We certainly learned that the majority leader, we learned this from Mitch McConnell too, is incredibly powerful in the Senate.

But it just seems today, when the majority leader's main role is whipping his or her own party, how have they, in the past, been able to get through this threshold? What have they done?

So I guess, Sean, this is what puzzles me because it seems that over time in most periods, these gangs that are formed, as you say, to control getting through cloture, getting the sixty votes that are necessary. They've generally had a moderating influence on legislation because they usually are a mix of Democrats and Republicans close to the middle.

Someone like the Senator Joe Manchin today from West Virginia, who is probably closer to the middle than many other Democrats would be in the Senate or Susan Collins, I guess on the Republican side for Maine. And they've had an enormous amount of influence on legislation over time, but it seems in the last decade that hasn't happened.

And it seems as if, the filibuster is being invoked, more often than not, just to stop any deliberation, for example, on gun control, to stop deliberation on voting rights.

Is that a newer phenomenon and if so, why?

So over time, Sean, I think, as a consequence of a closely split Senate for quite a while and the difficulty of getting major legislation through there has been a chipping away of the filibuster. The budget reconciliation itself, I think, is one example of that.

Certainly, as I recall, the Democratic Party under President Obama eliminated the filibuster for judicial appointments short of the Supreme Court. And then, of course, the Republican Party under Donald Trump eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, which is how Trump was able to nominate and appoint three different members of the court.

Do you foresee a continued chipping away of the filibuster?

Do you foresee an elimination of it or just leaving it as it is?

Or Sean, and this would be a road toward the end you're describing, is it likely that we will see more significant chipping away of it just in the coming months, for example, with Democrats wanting to be able to pass voting rights legislation?

And I guess this is my last question. Sean, do you foresee the Senate moving to what Joe Manchin himself has mentioned, which is the possibility of at least making those who want to invoke the filibuster make them work harder, make them actually stand up and speak right now?

Oftentimes, right, those who are willing to filibuster simply threatened to do it, and the Senate moves on. But do you foresee them at least raising the pain threshold for filibusterers, as Manchin has suggested?

And so, right, it's a good talking point, but I just can't see it playing out, except and perhaps in very limited cases. It's a great insight, Sean, that there is a trade off in terms of time for the Senate and the majority has very limited time to get things done, especially when you look at the electoral clock with a 2022 election coming up.

Zachary as we close here, what are your thoughts on this?

There's a younger generation like yours. First of all, do you pay attention to this?

Is this something that can motivate people?

I mean one thing Sean is saying is that the filibuster's days are numbered. That certainly means that this is an issue people should pay attention to, do you think that's that's the case?

Great point. Is that accurate, Sean, do you think?

And there we have the reason the filibuster has survived as long as it has.

Sean, this was fantastic. You offer such detailed and insightful knowledge on Congress and related political matters. And you're so good at explaining things and also making it fun and interesting, so thank you, Sean, for joining us today.

Oh, thank you for having me on, Jeremi. It's a pleasure talking to you and Zachary today. And Zachary, thank you for your poem, as always, and most of all, thank you to our listeners for joining us for this episode of This is Democracy.

Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. This week we're going to discuss the Vietnam War and its legacies, its continuing legacies in American society, in global policy, and particularly in light of a recent set of conflicts that produced similarly controversial outcomes for American society and global policy, the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are very fortunate to be joined by a friend, colleague, distinguished author, and distinguished scholar, Mark Lawrence.

Mark is the director of the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum here in Austin, Texas, which is the best presidential library, and I say that without any bias at all. Mark is also a professor in the UT Department of History, and he has taught courses on American and international history and various other topics. He's written three fantastic books.

His first book, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam. His second book is a wonderful narrative history of the Vietnam War as a whole, The Vietnam War: A Concise International History, and it's the only history of the Vietnam War I've seen that is truly concise. It's very hard to write a concise history of the Vietnam War.

And Mark's most recent book, the book that has just come out that we're going to talk about today, is on the Vietnam War and its legacies. It's called The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era. Mark, congratulations on your book, and thanks for joining us.

Before we turn to our discussion with Mark, of course, we have Zachary's scene-setting poem. What is your poem titled today, Zachary?

Let's hear it.

Very moving, Zachary. What is your poem about?

That's a perfect gateway into our discussion with Mark Lawrence. Mark, these are issues you've grappled with in your scholarship for decades.

It's always downhill after Zachary's poem, Mark. But Mark, you have, especially in this recent book, you've really delved into the ways in which the effort to build utopia, or a great society as Lyndon Johnson called it abroad in Vietnam, really distorted American thinking and American society. First of all, why was the United States trying to do this in Vietnam? Why were we looking to build this utopia, as Zachary put it, in a place so far away that so few Americans could even identify?

And why were our failures there? And of course, you and others have written in depth on the sources of our shortcomings in these activities. But why was it so disruptive? Why did it have such a deep effect at home, as Zachary refers to in his poem? And also,as your new book really narrates in such depth and in such compelling detail, why did it have such an effect on American foreign policy in so many other areas?

And Mark, I think your book is really brilliant on that point because it shows, especially in your country-specific chapters, and I hope all of our listeners will go ahead and buy and read the book. Mark has chapters on Brazil, India, Iran, Indonesia, and Southern Africa. In each of these chapters, there's kind of a similar narrative arc, it seems to me, where the United States is initially pursuing self-interested goals, but also goals that are merged to some sense of democratic hope, some sense of positive change. And then in almost every one of these chapters, Mark, to my reading, the effects of the Vietnam War to push the United States toward more support for authoritarianism and often more militaristic behavior or supportive militaristic behavior on the ground. Is that a fair reading? And if so, why does that happen?

And Mark, why this arc? Why in each case does it seem not only that the United States is less ambitious as you put it so well in your title, but also that the United States becomes, I don't know if this is fair, but it seems to me more cynical in its policies.

And just to build on that, Mark, another thing that struck me in your book was how often LBJ, the President of the United States, was willing to work with people he wouldn't work with otherwise if they were willing to support him in Vietnam. So in a strange way, the Vietnam War became a driver of American policy rather than American interests and ideals. Again, is that fair? And what are your thoughts on that?

So Mark, could you just say a little more about why that happens though? I mean, your book narrates that so well. And I was particularly struck by the Brazilian generals as well, because to me, you couldn't get farther from Vietnam than Brazil, right? But why is, I mean, this is the most powerful person in the world, President Lyndon Johnson. He's got so much experience also dealing with political failure as well as political success. Why does this small, as he says, this small country far away, why does it come to dominate everything this way?

Right. You and I have talked about this before. I mean, even his views of students in the United States become defined by where they stand on the Vietnam War, which is extraordinary if you think about that. Zachary.

Yeah, I thought, Mark, your book did really a wonderful job of taking that story that some of us have focused on and really connecting it to the story of what was called the third world and how this impacted not simply detente policy, a search for stability between the US and the Soviet Union and a search for law and order at home. Lyndon Johnson's the first to really use that phrase, law and order. But as you show in this book, as I think no one has before, how this really comes to define, again, American policy in Brazil and Indonesia, which to me was, again, startling. I had seen hints of this, but my gosh, the depth of it, I think we have not appreciated until reading your book.

I wonder, Mark, what you think about the legacies. I guess I'm asking you in this question sort of for your extended conclusion. You have an excellent conclusion to the book, but how would you extend it on for where this takes us, not just in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but in the last decades of the Cold War?

Sure. And the Middle East, you talk about and write about Iran, and that certainly would be a major element of what you're talking about here. Mark, how then should we explain, taking in all that you've shared with us in elucidating these changes in American policy and the implications for American democracy and for international affairs, how then do we situate that in relationship to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have an eerie echo of the period you're writing about?

I think that's super helpful, but then it opens up another question, right? If so many American leaders who were making policy and American voters who were voting for those leaders had the experience of Vietnam in mind in one way or another, and here I'm thinking about people like recently passed Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former Vice President Richard Cheney, Obama himself, who was reading about Vietnam at the start of his presidency. How could they make mistakes of excessive ambition, if that's what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, if, as you point out, the lesson was so clearly to limit ambition?

Mark, we always like to close with a focus on how history can provide us some optimistic, positive steps forward. And that's an article of faith for our podcast. As you know, it's an article of faith for me.

I have to believe this. And your book is so rich in its recounting of this period. What are the lessons that you hope, especially in the context of Afghanistan and Iraq now, what are the lessons you hope that readers take as they think about American foreign policy and American democracy going forward?

I think that's wonderful, Mark. Another way I think of thinking about that and, and you've, you've really provided such a strong foundation for this is to recognize that trying to win unwinnable wars is not what we should be doing. That there are many other opportunities for the use of America's vast resources, right.

I had to find some optimism, Zachary, as, as we close. Uh, I know you and your friends have been talking a lot about what's happened in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, war in Afghanistan and Iraq, obviously the Vietnam. Do you see lessons for your generation in this story?

I think there's a lot to that. And there's a lot between cynicism and the utopia. You talked about it in your poem, right? I think, I think Mark's book shows that there actually are. There's a lot that can be done in between maybe that's, what's abandoned because of the obsession with Vietnam. Mark, this has been a really insightful conversation. I encourage everyone to go out and read and read your book and buy it and give it away as gifts as well. The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam era. Mark, thank you so much for joining us.

Zachary, Zachary. Thank you for your poem and thank you. Most of all, to our listeners for joining us for this episode of This is Democracy.

Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy. Today we are talking with a great author, good friend, and really outstanding thinker about a topic that we all confront every day. What is good leadership? How do we understand what it means to be an effective leader, as well as a persuasive and ethical?

In the world of social media, the world of flaming the world of difficult, difficult issues and difficult opposition to getting anything done. Our guest, Mark Updegrove, has written a number of books on presidential leadership. And his most recent book is really an. Excellent elegant study of John F. Kennedy and uses John F. Kennedy in many ways as a window into the possibilities and the limits of leadership in our world. It's a book. I hope you all will pick up and read. It's an eminently readable and deeply researched book. It's called Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency. Mark, thank you for joining us.

It is nice to be able to have a conversation. Mark is a presidential historian. He's the author, as I said, of five books on the presidency; he's also interviewed, I believe, just about every living president, except for Donald Trump. Is that correct Mark?

Whoever that is.

Mark serves now as the president and CEO of the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation, I get to consider him a neighbor. We don't see each other often enough. And, before that, he was the director of the LBJ Presidential Library.

Mark is also a presidential historian on ABC News. And, earlier in his career, among other things, he was a publisher of Newsweek. And if you read his newest book, you'll find out that he had a very close relationship with Hugh Sidey, who was the, I guess, the editor of Time Magazine. Is that correct, Mark?

Well, for those of you who buy and read Mark's book, there's some wonderful insights from Hughes Sidey, that Mark shares as well as insights from Scotty Reston, and many other journalists of the time. Before we get into our discussion with Mark, we have, of course, Zachary's scene sitting poem.

What is today's title Zachary?

Let's hear it.

I love it. Zachary, what is your poem about?

I think that's such a wonderful opening mark to discussing your fantastic book. Why did you write this book on John Kennedy? So many other books have been written. What did you have to say that others haven't said?

Well, you absolutely succeeded, at least for this reader, in both of the things you just mentioned. It's a brisk read, as you said, but it's also a moving, cinematic, but more than cinematic, rueful and thoughtful account of his life. You open with one of the low points of his presidency, which might surprise a lot of readers, the Vienna Summit of 1961, when in a certain way, the leader of the Soviet Union embarrasses this young president. Why did you start there?

In your vivid description of this, and it really is vivid, and you bring out Kennedy's words, you bring out his emotions, it does resonate with, I think, the central challenge of contemporary leadership, what President Biden must live with every day, which is the sense that you're in the most powerful office in the world, but you have almost unceasing opposition from external actors of Vladimir Putin or Nikita Khrushchev, internal actors, in Kennedy's case, the military that doesn't trust him.

You're really detailed in your description, Mark, also in former President Eisenhower and others who really don't think this man is up to the job, this man who barely wins the presidency in the closest election, as you say, in the 20th century. How does Kennedy deal with that? How does he move forward in this almost unwinnable situation?

I'm so glad you brought that up, Mark. It's one of the lasting lessons for me from your book, and the quote from Attlee, which is on page 226, I had not actually seen before, and I'm going to use it now and cite you also, obviously. How does one do that?

I want to dig a little deeper, and you have so many nuggets in your book about this, because every president, of course, tries to be eloquent. Kennedy was in some sense trying to be Franklin Roosevelt, and every president since Kennedy tries to mimic Kennedy or mimic Reagan. Why is it that some presidents are able to do this and others aren't? And why was Kennedy able to do this, and even his successor, who interestingly comes on stage late in your book, Lyndon Johnson, why was he unable to do this?

You call it disengaged at one point

And as you show, civil rights leaders who had been, let's say, lukewarm on Kennedy, like Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, and others, they themselves see it as a turning point at that time.

I wanted to point out also, Mark, that one of the many things I learned from your book is how effective Kennedy's press conferences were as well, which I think is another version of what you're talking about now, his ability, yes, to use the words that Sorensen and other speechwriters, Richard Goodwin, had put together for him, but his ability to own the words and often to extemporize off the cuff and connect with an audience. You say, it's extraordinary, this is around page 60 in the book, that about 18 million people on average saw his press conferences, 90 percent of Americans, 90 percent of Americans watched at least one of his first three, according to a 1961 poll. That's extraordinary, that's the Twitter of its time, isn't it?

Mark, that's so well said. I think your book lives up to its title. Your story is a story of policy, of course.

It's a story of an individual. It's a biography. It's an analysis of the presidency, but it is really a story of how Kennedy uses his grace to lead.

Of course, it's the oldest story in the world that the great leaders, whatever that means to be a great leader, that they have grace. Franklin Roosevelt had a certain grace about him. I think you capture that.

You describe that as well as anyone I've read on this. I wonder, though, how then you think about that in light of many of the other things you include in the book as the honest historian you are that run against this. I mean, the test of any book is does it capture the complexity of a life and yours certainly does.

In particular, you very honestly and in great detail talk about Kennedy's affairs and it's hard to have a conversation about Kennedy today without talking about that, particularly the story of Mimi Beardsley, which we only learned about, I guess, a decade or two ago, this 19-year-old intern who I think it's fair to say is sexually exploited by the president. Yet there's the image, of course, of Camelot and Kennedy and Jackie and the children. You're also very clear that Kennedy was not the most engaged father.

This is not a book on that. Kennedy is not a model of child rearing. I'm just curious how you think about this. All lives are contradictions in a way. How do you think about this in relationship to the grace that you also describe?

Right, and you certainly show that very well, in a really well-described few chapters, I think, on the Cuban Missile Crisis, and I want readers to read the book. I don't want us to share all that with them. I want them to buy the book to read that, because I think the Cuban Missile Crisis, as you say, is probably the most significant Cold War crisis.

I'd like us to close, Mark, on the natural place to close, the assassination, and not so much what happens. I think everyone knows the story, but more how we should think about it today. Is it really a turning point in our history, and how do you look upon it?

It's one of the things I think you do that's very new in this book. You're looking upon that assassination now, not just about 50 years hence, but also from the perspective of what's happened in the last decade or two, to the nature of American democracy. How do you look upon that moment right now?

I think there's a lot to that. And, our final question, Mark, and it's the one we always ask, and I know it's one you think about deeply. What should we, what should young listeners in particular, take from Kennedy's life? What are the lessons for leadership today?

Absolutely right, and it's one of the central messages of our podcast, the importance of participatory democracy and that means getting involved in all ways that one can, Zachary is Mark's description of Kennedy and this discussion does it open avenues for young people, you think?

I think, Mark that Zachary has given the perfect answer for why people should read your book. What do you think?

We have that conversation quite often. And our listeners often tell me that too. Mark, thank you so much for joining us and for writing this book, I wanna remind our listeners, it's Incomparable Grace by Mark Updegrove, and it's a fantastic book. It's a thoughtful and deep read, but also a quick read.

And I encourage you to, and a quick read in the best sense in that it's a book you don't put down and you begin it, in New York City and you land in Los Angeles and you've finished it, which is the mark of a good book in my mind. Mark. Congratulations.

Thank you, Zachary for your poem, and thank you most of all, to our loyal listeners for joining us for this week's episode of This Is Democracy.

Welcome to our new episode of "This Is Democracy." This week we are going to discuss the history of unions in the United States, and we're going to look at the current strike by auto workers, in the United States. These are auto workers who belong to one of the oldest and most important unions, but one of many unions in the history of the United States, the United Auto Workers.

And we are fortunate to be joined by one of the leading historians of workers' unions and race in the United States. This is our friend, Professor William Jones, who is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota.

He's the author of, many articles and two really important books. The first, "The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South," and then, more recently, "The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights," a book that puts the March on Washington, which everyone has heard of, especially because of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

Will's book puts the March on Washington in the context of labor history as well as civil rights history, which is really important. Will, thank you so much for joining us today.

And of course, we have our scene-setting poem from Mr. Zachary Suri. Uh, Zachary, what's the title of your poem today? "From the UAW Picket Lines." Wow, we're gonna get an on-the-scenes account from you, Zachary? Or at least an imagining of one, yes. Okay, well let's hear it.

And that's your point about late but still important, right? Exactly.

Will, this moment we're living in now that Zachary captures, I think, a bit in his poem, is that how you would frame the current labor action against the automakers? Is that really what it is? Is it about automation or what's really at the root of this?

Will, that's really helpful in framing this, and I wanted to come back to your first point because I think that's one that at least to my reading of the news has received a lot less attention. The fact that the auto workers not only gave up certain benefits to help the automobile companies during the 2008 recession, but also that they actually agreed to create a two-tiered system. Can you just say more about that, how that's worked and what the expectations were when that was negotiated in 2008? Right. Well, I mean the expectations were that this was going to save an industry that was really on the brink of collapse and so that, you know, which, in a sense, that has happened. The way it works though is that you get, you know, something that you hear a lot in interviews with workers on the picket lines is they'll say, you know, like they're standing next to workers who do the same jobs under the same conditions as them who earn, you know, in some cases half of what they earn with no benefits.

Well, that point, Will, it seems to me leads really to the bigger historical question, which is what role have unions played? Why does the UAW exist? I get this question from my students all the time. Maybe that's just a function of those students being in Texas. I don't know. But, what you're describing seems to me to actually be an anathema to what unions historically have been about. Is that correct?

Will, your discussion of the election of a new UAW leader brings up an important issue. I often hear people say very derogatory things about unions, and I think some of this comes out of the rhetoric of the 1970s and '80s that unions are corrupt and that unions are run only for the leadership. That's obviously not true, but why do you think that's said so often, and what's your response to that?

I'm so glad you explained that Will, because it is striking and I think undeniable that moments in our history when unions have been stronger, we have seen less economic inequality in moments such as the 1970s and '80s. When we see unions receding in American history we see more inequality. So there's at least a correlation there, as my economist friends would say. That's right. That's, I mean, if you, one chart that I like to show my students is if you chart the level of income inequality in the United States over the past century, and you chart union representation rates, they're in exact reverse correlation, right? That as unions have declined, we've seen wealth inequality grow.

Will, do you think that's why it appears that there is at least some kind of renaissance of unions in the United States? You see Starbucks workers, Amazon workers, and various others talking about unions in ways we hadn't seen before. Is that part of the story?

Will, there's a lot of talk and you've been part of this discussion too about working class voters. From, you know, the period of Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt's presidency forward, there was a presumption in part because of the connections between the Democratic Party and some of the major unions that working class voters would be Democratic voters. Then the Trump movement seems to have reversed that, at least in some areas, perhaps particularly in the Midwest. How do you see that issue today? Are working class voters MAGA voters? Are they Trump voters? Are they Democratic voters? What would you say?

 Is it fair to say that the white male elements of the working class that we associate also with traditional unionism, the traditional people working in Henry Ford's plants and others, is that a smaller and smaller part of what you'd call the working class today?

So Will, we always like to close our episodes by bringing together the enormous reservoir of information and knowledge that guests like you are sharing with us, and we're fortunate to be able to participate in that and to benefit from your knowledge. We like to bring together this historical knowledge with a forward-looking perspective. Based on this really deep and complex history of unions and workers in the United States that you have such a strong command of, what would you say to a President Biden, or it could be to a Republican presidential candidate, what would you say to them about how one could be both pro-worker and pro-growth? It seems too often we see these as dichotomous positions in our history, that you have to either be for growth or for unions. Of course, many periods of economic growth have been periods of union growth and union prosperity in our society as well. So how can we bring those two together looking forward today?

Zachary, you spent the summer in Germany, and of course, Germany's a country with very strong unions. Do you agree with Will that Germany's an example of economic growth and worker protections going hand-in-hand?

And Zachary, for young observers like yourself, are unions part of that story? Do you feel that your generation is giving more attention to unions than maybe the generation just before yours?

So Will, that was the last question, the really last question I had for you, which was for our listeners, particularly our younger listeners, if they're interested in learning more about unions as scholars and perhaps as activists, what are the best ways to get involved and to become knowledgeable of this subject matter?

 Its such a great point. Even in a state like Texas, which traditionally doesn't have the same strong unionization as other parts of the country, teachers are part of a union, right? That's right. What I know your next project is on, Will, public service workers, right? That's right.  My wife, who's a city council member, she's actually part of AFSCME, which is the public sector union. And so there are actually a lot of people around who work with or are involved with unions. And, as you say, Will, I think that talking to them and getting a sense, positive and negative, of what their experience is, is important in informing ourselves when we're discussing these issues politically.  Yeah. I mean, it's true that, you know, if you're in high school, the chances are your teacher is a union member.

Right. Right. Well, Will, thank you so much for sharing this excursion, a necessary excursion today into the history of unions and workers in American society. There's obviously much more you could say. You could fill, I think, 500 podcast episodes on this, but you've given us really a wonderful introduction to the topic, and I hope our listeners will dig in for more. So, thank you Professor Will Jones for joining us today. Thanks for having me on. It was great to talk to both of you. And thank you, Zachary, of course, for your, inspiring and really imaginative poem bringing us to the picket lines where we all could learn a lot. And thank you for doing that, Zachary. Thank you most of all to our loyal listeners for joining us for this episode of This Is Democracy.

Welcome to our new episode of this is democracy. This week, we are going to return to the Middle East. We did an episode a few weeks ago with Peter Beinart on the conflict between Israel and Hamas. And today we're going to take an even more historical deep dive. We're going to look at the 1970s, which I think historians have come to agree is a period of major transformation in the region. And we're going to look at what happened in the 1970s and how the experience of that crucial decade had deep influence upon the events that we're seeing today and probably will continue to have deep influence upon where we go from where we are today in the region. This is a case where history is not only part of the past, but really is ever present in our contemporary conflicts and our contemporary efforts to understand the conflicts around us. We're fortunate to be joined by a person who's a close friend and someone who I think is one of the really great scholars of the Middle East from the 1960s to the present. This is Salim Yaqub. He's a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. and director of UCSB Center for Cold War Studies and International History. Salim, it's so good to have you on the podcast.

Salim Yaqub is the author of three books that I highly recommend to all of our listeners. His first book, Containing Arab Nationalism, is really, I think, as close to the definitive work as is possible on the Eisenhower Doctrine in the Middle East, which was really the first American Cold War Doctrine for major influence, even perhaps for attempted dominance in the region.

Salim's second book, which is really one of my favorites, "Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and the US Middle East relations in the 1970s". This is a book that looks at events in the Middle East, but also within the United States and the emerging Arab American community, which becomes very important as Salim shows to American politics in the 1970s. It's also a book filled with wonderful anecdotes about Woody Allen. and Henry Kissinger and various other individuals. So I encourage all of our listeners to read it.

And Salim's most recent book, "Winds of Hope, Storms of Discord". What a great title. The United States since 1945. And that title would certainly apply to the present as well as the entire period from 1945 to the present. Salim has written many important articles and other chapters on U.S. foreign policy, on the Middle East, and on Arab American political activism.

Before we turn to our conversation with Salim, we have, of course, our scene setting poem from Mr. Zachary Suri. Zachary, what's the title of your poem today? "To Israel, a Widow". "To Israel, a Widow". Wow. Let's hear it.

I love the doggerel in there Zachary. What is your poem about?

I love the arc in your poem, Zachary, from Isaac Bashevik Singer, who sort of represents the early generation of European Ashkenazi Jews who settle Israel. And then, of course, the generational change that I sort of feel in your poem as it goes through to where we are today, which is a Middle East that looks very different, of course, from The world of Isaac Petrovic Singer in the 1950s and 60s, right? Yes, very much so.

Salim, maybe that's a great point of entry. As I mentioned at the top of the episode, you're one of a number of historians, you're one of the leading historians, making the case that the 1970s, this period about a quarter century after World War II, that the 1970s is a real turning point for the region and also for U.S. policy. How should we begin to understand that?

Certainly you've given us a sense of the density of conflict and change occurring in that, in that decade. Zachary, you had a question? Yeah.

I don't want us to jump too quickly to the present. I want us to stay in the seventies, but the question really has to be asked. Many have made an analogy between the October, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the 1973 attack by the Arab states on Israel, do you see an analogy between those two events?

One of the things that's striking about the '73 war to me as a historian, Salim, and I wonder if you react the same way, is how this terrible war, and a war that initially looked like it might lead to the collapse of Israel and then, as you said, turns around relatively quickly with Israel occupying for a short time more territory than it had before the war. Correct. How, this terrible war then leads to a peace process? First of all, do you see a connection between what many call the Camp David process that eventually leads to an agreement between Israel and Egypt brokered in part by the United States? Do you see a strong connection there? And how should we understand that connection?

And this is something many of us have chewed on for a long time, right? How to evaluate Kissinger's diplomatic shuttle diplomacy and his efforts to, as you say, take Egypt out of what had been a coalition of anti Israeli states. One other point I thought I'd add for you to comment on, and then I know Zachary has a question too, is part of what he's also doing is making the United States the most powerful external actor in the region. He's sidelining the Soviet Union, which had been an ally of Egypt, right? And that, of course, has implications for the United States in the region, taking us all the way up to the Iraq war, correct?

Salim, the PLO, the Palestinian Palestinian Liberation Organization, which is the predecessor to the Palestinian organization led by Mahmoud Abbas today in the 1970s, it's often depicted at least within the United States, accurately or inaccurately as a terrorist organization. First of all, is that accurate? And how do we understand the intersection between concerns about terrorism, airplane hijackings, various other events, and the issues that you've laid out so well for us here?

Is it effective though, Salim? I mean, I'm guessing that leaders of Hamas would look back and say, that the more radical PLO of the early seventies, when, for instance, Yasser Arafat comes to the United Nations and displays a weapon in his holster. And, you know, that image of radicalism and violence was more effective at getting attention than the scaling back of ambitions, as you put it before.

I appreciate, Salim, the care and thoughtfulness in the way you said that, and I think it's a very reasonable position you've adopted. Zachary?

Salim, it strikes me that one of the legacies that's unavoidable is the continued lack of Palestinian statehood, that the two state solution that you described so well doesn't come into being. And looking back over this period over the 1970s, one might have thought that things might have gone that way.

The Arab states, as you say, in 1973 are united and they show that they are not as weak as they had been in 67. The Saudis and the other oil rich states are able to use oil as a weapon in many ways to bring down the American economy or to cause enormous pain in the United States, both at the beginning of the 1970s period, and then also at the end of the decade. So there's rising Arab power.

Israel also seems to recognize, as you said, that it has to make some kind of deal with its neighbors. So why do the Palestinians continue to be victimized? Why is that one of the overriding legacies from this period?

Right. Just one follow up question on this, because I think your explanation is so thoughtful and balanced. So many Israelis that you and I know, and Zachary knows, and others know want peace. Why, in your narrative, has it been so hard for Israel to pursue peace? In your narrative, in your description, Israel is in some ways using its alliance with Egypt to avoid hard decisions with the Palestinians. Why do you think that's the case?

Right. Which is the opposite of full scale siege warfare in Gaza. Exactly. Exactly

Zachary, I want to turn to you now. Salim has given us a tour de force here. He's in 30 to 5 minutes, 40 minutes, he's provided a really thoughtful, balanced, rigorous overview of an entire decade and its legacies for today, many of its legacies for today. And I know you have been deeply involved in debates about these policy issues on campus with other students. We discussed this in our prior episode. How do you react to Salim's historical framing for what you're debating today among students and others regarding this region of the world?

Yeah, no, I think one of the real strengths, one of the many strengths of Salim's account and his scholarship is that it doesn't make the United States all powerful, far from it, but it does show how the United States might be the one actor that can play a role at certain moments in bringing the different sides together or pushing them apart. I think there, Salim's account gives us evidence of both of those things. As a final word, Salim, if you had a few seconds with President Biden, then what would you say as a historian that he should be thinking about?

And I think Salim, that's a perfect place for us to not really close, but sort of, no, but bring this discussion to a point. I think what your scholarship displays and what you have provided today are two lessons for us above all. You know, one is that close attention to the history really matters. The events that we're living with today, reflect long developing, many long developing historical trajectories, and we can't really understand them. And we certainly shouldn't take sides before we understand this history. We have to pause and spend some time to look at where we've come from.

And that second to that one can speak for the interests, as I think you have, the historical interests of Palestinians, without in any way embracing the most extreme forms of violence, which you have clearly renounced and also argued are ineffective, in fact. And, I think that's really important. One doesn't have to give up on the Palestinian cause or the Israeli cause because the more extreme voices and extreme actors are the ones that are getting the most attention. Absolutely. So, Salim, thank you for educating us, for providing us a really valuable and missing background for most of our discussions. I hope our listeners will take what you say, read more, and think deeply before they jump to conclusions one way or another in this conflict. Salim, it's really been a pleasure and an honor to have you on our podcast. Thank you for joining us.

And Zachary, thank you for your poem that I think resonates with some of the themes and thank you for your questions and thank you most of all to our loyal listeners for joining us for this week of this is democracy.

Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy. This week we're going to discuss a term that is thrown around almost every day in newspapers and political discussion, but a term that is rarely defined or historicized, and that term is free trade. The United States calls itself a free trade nation. Whether that's true or not is something we'll discuss, but more significantly we'll discuss what free trade really means, and how a group of thinkers, pioneering thinkers and political activists and policy makers in the 19th century pioneered a new way of pursuing free trade with certain ideals of peace attached to it.

We'll understand and talk about what it was that they meant and what it means for us today as we understand our own world. We're fortunate to be joined by a friend and really wonderful scholar, Marc Palen. Marc is a historian at the University of Exeter, and his new book that we're going to talk about is called Pax Economica: Left Wing Visions of a Free Trade World. It was just published in early 2024 by Princeton University Press. It's already been featured in the New Yorker magazine, one of my favorite magazines, as one of the best new books out in the last year. Marc has written on this topic before, his dissertation that he wrote at the University of Texas at Austin. And his first book is called The "Conspiracy" of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle for Empire and Economic Globalization. Marc also writes frequently for major newspapers and magazine, including Le Monde in France, Time Magazine, the Washington Post, New York Times, and the Australian Eye. So he covers at least three continents, if not more, in his writing.

And as I, as I said before, Marc has a connection to the University of Texas. He was a graduate student here. And so we're very proud of the work that he's done. Marc, thanks so much for joining us today.

I'm really looking forward to this discussion. Before we get into our discussion of Marc's book and free trade, we have, of course, Mr. Zachary's scene setting poem. Zachary, what's the title of your poem today? A World at Sail. A World at Sail. Okay, well, let's sail into it.

I love the imagery, Zachary, and I love the evocations of peace and peacemaking. What is your poem about?

Marc. I think that's a great place to really dive into your book. So much of your book, especially the first 2 to 3 chapters is about the efforts of certain activists, seems to me, to escape what they see is the imperialism and economic nationalism and cruelty of of the 19th century of the world of empire that we all know a fair amount about. Why did these activists, Richard Cobden is one of them who stands out, why did they turn to free trade as a source of peace and anti imperialism, as you call it?

Yeah. And it's striking to me in your book that, and it's in your subtitle, right? These are left wing visions. These are progressive, self defined progressives in many ways. The figures who you include go from Richard Cobden to Jane Addams, Norman Angle, so many of these people we associate with progressive anti war, anti imperial stands. Many listeners today, though, might think about free trade as benefiting large corporations and benefiting the rich, allowing the rich to get richer. We think about that with the movement of capital and investments and hedge funds and things like that today. Obviously, your progressive figures have a different vision of what free trade is about. How do they connect it, as you describe in the book, to domestic reform?

One of the striking elements of your book to me, and this also echoes a point you made in your prior book. So it's one of the Palen contributions to understanding these issues, is that the United States, for all of its claims about free trade, was not a free trading nation in the late 19th and early 20th century, and in some ways was the enemy of these free traders. Can you say more about that, Marc?

So, Marc, one of the really interesting parts of your book is your reinterpretation of the late 19th and early 20th century, just along the lines we've been discussing. Traditionally, people have argued that, this is a period of, growing trade, growing interdependence between countries, and that actually causes violence and imperialism. You see this the opposite way, right? And tell us more about that.

And just to underline a point before we get to the First World War, you make this clear in your book that the free traders criticize the United States in particular for building a closed empire, closed to external trade empire that benefited U. S. trade in the Philippines, for example. That this was not a free trade empire, as some have argued, but in fact, what the United States was doing was building an economically nationalist empire, correct?

So as I understand it, Marc, you have a real resuscitation of Norman Angle in your book. Norman Angle, as you point out, was this incredibly popular writer in the early 20th century who predicted that countries that trade together will not go to war together. And of course, those countries did go to war in World War I and realists, those who have dominated international relations scholarship really in the last 70 years, kind of use Norman Angle as a whipping boy, right? They say, you see these liberal internationalists, these left wing thinkers who believe that if you create a world of cooperation, you won't have war. See how wrong they are, and the world is filled with inevitable conflict and war. That's the realist argument, of course. You're bringing Norman Angle back, though you're saying he was actually more correct than realists have given him credit for. Do I understand that right?

So why was it, Marc, that Franklin Roosevelt and Cordell Hull, his Secretary of State, who often gets forgotten, but gets a lot of attention in your book, why is it that they came to agree with Norman Angle?Why did they buy into this free trade argument in the ways in which their predecessors had not? And why did they buy into it after a world war and during the Great Depression, when you would have expected them to be more economically nationalist as Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt's predecessor certainly was, what led Roosevelt and Hull to shift in the direction of Cobden and others during the great depression?

Right. And this, as you describe it, becomes a kind of true golden age for free trade, if we might call it that, from the end of World War II until, I don't know, late 1960s, early 1970s, is that correct?

And to me, that's one of the more interesting parts of your overall very interesting book is when you get to neoliberalism and you get to the 1970s and 80s and Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, many would see them as free traders and maybe even as inheritors of Richard Cobden's ideas, you say, no. You draw a distinction between neoliberals and free trade peace activists. What is the distinction there?

And you make the, you make the argument that neoliberalism, as you say, this is from your book, page 218, that neoliberals have effectively co opted free trade as a neo colonial tool. So you are clearly making the case, there's a different version of free trade that's not neo-colonial, that's not mercantilist. As you call the, the moment from 2016 on. What would that be? I mean, one of the real goals of our podcast each week is to try to use history to help uncover alternative pathways. Things we could do today that would be hopeful. So what is the hopeful alternative to the world of US-China market rivalry that often seems to disempower smaller countries and smaller cultures. What's the alternative pathway from the left wing free trade vision that you've excavated so well here, Marc?

I just have to ask before we turn to Zachary's thoughts on this, isn't that really what Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were trying to do? You criticize them actually in the book, but wouldn't they identify with the alternative vision you just articulated?

Zachary, what are your thoughts on this as someone who cares deeply about international trade and international connections? You're participating in this podcast from Leipzig, Germany, where you're doing some research of your own now, I mean, does Marx history resonate with a vision for where democracy and international affairs can go today?

Yes, I think that's really well said, Zachary. And one thing, Marc, I've been thinking about as I was re-reading your book, and as I've been listening to your really thoughtful and inspiring comments today, you know, we are entering a moment where it does seem that protectionism is the main valence of politics. As you say, both presidential candidates in the U. S. this year will be running as protectionists, as advocates of industrial policy of one kind or another. Certainly that's the way China operates. The E. U. Has been moving more in that in that direction, and of course, we're witnessing wars, economic nationalist wars across the world from the Middle East to Ukraine and Russia.

But as all that's happening, there is a desire to move beyond this moment in a search for an alternative. And especially in a world that's torn by inequalities and warfare, this vision of interdependence, of trade, of openness, of, building prosperity, shared prosperity through open connections that are not militarized and mediated by international institutions. That actually might become a more compelling vision. Much of the discussion around the International Criminal Court is in many ways a discussion about this. And so we might be on the cusp, just as we were in the late 1920s, we might be on the cusp again of another free trade international peace activist moment. That would seem to be the hopeful democratic message in much of this. Do you agree with that Marc?

Yes, I think that's very well said, Marc, and a very nice connection to one of the central issues of our world today, which is the inequalities in food and nutritional access across, within countries and across countries. Of course, this brings us full circle, as always, to, in some ways, the inspiration for our podcast, which is Franklin Roosevelt. We started this podcast with his inspiration for how each generation writes a new chapter in the book of democracy. And, as always, the new chapters build on old chapters. Chapters that might have been forgotten before. Marc, you have in your book, Pax Economica, that I recommend to all of our listeners, you have reminded us of such an important chapter in the evolution of Anglo American and international democracy in the 19th and 20th centuries. A chapter that seems more relevant than ever in this neo mercantilist age, as you call it. Thank you so much for joining us this week, Marc, and sharing your insights with us.

And Zachary, thank you for your poem. Your image of us sailing is still very prominent in my mind throughout our conversation. And thank you, of course, most of all, to our loyal listeners for joining us for this episode of This Is Democracy.

Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. This week, we are continuing our discussion of democracies and elections around the world. This is, as we've said many times on the podcast, this is a year with more democracies voting, and more non democracies voting as well in elections around the world than at any point in human history before. And these elections and democracies and non democracies will really set the course for so many countries and probably for our globe moving forward for the next years and decades we are going to discuss today the recent elections in Venezuela and the controversies over those recent elections in Venezuela. On July 28 2024 the country of Venezuela held elections, and the incumbent president and dictator, Nicolás Maduro, claims he won the elections, but almost all observers, including the United States, are pretty clear on the evidence that Maduro lost these elections, what has happened in Venezuela and where do we go from here? We're going to understand the history surrounding these elections, what occurred in these elections, and we're going to think about based on knowledge of what's happened in other societies, particularly in the same region. We're going to discuss where we think these election results might go in the future of Venezuela. We are fortunate to be joined by my colleague and friend and someone who I think has done some of the most impressive work on authoritarianism and related regime change issues in Latin America. This is my colleague, Professor Kurt Wayland. Kurt Wayland is the Mike Hogg Professor in the Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. He's done amazing primary source research and direct interviews, the kind of work that historians love when you get dirty with the primary sources. He's done this research in so many countries in the region, probably as many as anyone else, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru and, of course, Venezuela. I probably left off some other countries, and I've of course forgotten to mention that he's also done research in the United States. Professor Wayland is the author of seven books. I'm going to just name a few of them, The Politics of Market Reform in Fragile Democracies, which was published in 2002, Making Waves: Democratic Contention in Europe and Latin America. 2014. Assault on Democracy: Communism, Fascism and Authoritarianism During the Interwar Years, published in 2021 and published just this year, a book I need to read because I haven't kept up with everything Kurt's written. It's impossible to keep up with it. Democracy's Resilience to Populism Threat, a book that's probably directly relevant to our discussion today. Professor Kurt Wayland, Kurt, thanks for joining us today.

Yes, yes. We are eager to hear your thoughts before we turn to Kurt's insights on this important topic. We have, of course, Mr. Zachary's poem. What's your poem titled today Zachary?

Hungry in Caracas, it, it sounds almost like a parable of sorts. Is it? We'll see. We'll see. Okay, let's hear it

Okay, let's hear it

I love the range of that Zachary, from the Hungry, Angry voters to the mustachioed militaristic leader. What is your poem about?

Right, right. Very well, said. Kurt to help us understand that this sad moment, in some ways, this tragic moment, as I think you mentioned earlier, where should we start? Nicolás Maduro is the dictator who replaced the prior dictator, Hugo Chávez. How should we understand the origins of this regime?

Kurt, that's a incredibly helpful overview, and I'm amazed at how much you were able to pack into that one answer that really helps us understand the rise of what was first a populist authoritarian regime and what now sounds like almost an Orwellian nightmare, is dictatorship which is obviously destroying the country, and it also helps to explain the incredibly large number of Venezuelan refugees coming to the United States, for example. Why did Maduro hold this election? It was clear he was going to lose. He did ban the Leader of the Opposition, Maria Corina Machado, but even with the stand-in opposition figure, Edmundo Gonzalez, it was quite clear from weeks ago, I think, right, that the opposition was going to get more votes. Why did he subject himself to this election?

And, Kurt, did, did Maduro think he would win? Was he fooled? There have been a number of articles saying that he's surrounded by so many sycophants that that he actually thought he was still popular. Is that true? Or is he more cynical than that.

It's a terrible situation. Zachary,

Right, right. It makes a lot of sense. And it's, it's, it's a paradoxical consequence of creating an international system that is in some cases, trying to hold war criminals and other horrible leaders accountable. The examples of Slobodan Milosevic from Serbia and others obviously stand stand out. Yes, please.

So do you think, Kurt, that it would be a better scenario if the international community were able to offer Maduro and his closest criminals safe haven to go live in Russia or live in the south of France, as the former dictator of Haiti did. Is that a viable alternative?

Zachary.

This is all very depressing. I have to say, Kurt, it sounds like we have a truly dystopian regime, but a dystopian regime that has developed coup-proof tentacles, as as many in the field would say, so. So what are the what are the options for going forward? I mean, there is a very well organized opposition, courageous, an opposition that was able to bring out a lot of voters, and also, as you said, the economy in Venezuela, despite Venezuela having more oil resources than any other country in the world, more oil than Saudi Arabia, even, nonetheless, this country is starving because of the mismanagement and the corruption and the International sanctions. So is there a breaking point? What does that look like? Where do you see this going?

Well Kurt, what about the possibility that we've seen in other countries such as Ukraine, where mid and lower level members of the military who see their families suffering, who see their neighborhoods destroyed, who are ashamed of what they're seeing, that they at some point. Point turn on the generals and and their dictator.

Well, that's a that's a very compelling, if sad, answer. Kurt, we like to close every episode with something hopeful, and I think we need that in this case. Our listeners are are are people who, like us, care about democracy, want to see reform to regimes like the one you've described. They wanna see reform in The United States too. What are the things we can do? What do you, as a as a leading scholar of the region, how do you think about your work and the work of your students and others contributing in some positive way to this terrible situation?

No. That's a that's an honest and and compelling answer.

What what do you think US policy should be? Are we is it appropriate to keep sanctions on Venezuela? Are there any any changes you would recommend in US policy?

Zachary, what do you think of all this? I mean, as as someone who cares about democracy, as part of a generation that's hoping to see more democracy in more countries, This is hard to listen to. Right? This is a really difficult story, and and, you know, and in some ways, it it is in our backyard. How do you react to this?

I agree, and and I think Kurt has quite brilliantly laid out for us in his work and in the discussion here an important research agenda, a research agenda not just for scholars like Kurt and myself, but for for all kinds of citizens, which is thinking through what are the options, what are the things the international community can and cannot do. And I would just highlight a point that Kurt made, which is that, in some ways, the efforts to hold appropriately leaders accountable for their crimes, and in theory, I'm certainly for that, but that effort often makes it harder to get them to leave power. And if our goal as supporters of democracy in a broad sense is about getting dictators out and nondictators in and building institutions, it's probably time we think through a little more, in a more sophisticated way how to do that. It it it seems as if the dictators are ahead of us in our thinking about international democracy and international democratic procedures. Is that a fair note to close on, Kurt? Do you agree with that?

Yes. And, of course, even your joke about Saint Helena points to another problem. When Napoleon was sent to Saint Helena, first of all, he wasn't happy to be there, and then in the end, he was poisoned because they were fearful. The European states said he would come back again, which is always the concern if you if you let these people go to a Saint Helena, that they'll just return. Kurt Weyland, thank you so much for joining us today, for sharing, really, I think, compelling, if quite depressing, insights into Venezuela and and I think the larger challenge of dictatorship and coup proofing regimes in in various places around the world. Venezuela is just one of the worst examples, but there are many others. I encourage our listeners to read Kurt's work. It's really eye opening in its depth and its comparative, breadth. So thank you, Kurt, for joining us today.

That's right. We we have to pursue the truth. And and for activists who care about democracy, we have to stare the reality in the face. We can't dream up futures that that don't match the world that we're in. Zachary, thank you for your inspiring poem and excellent questions as always, And thank you to our loyal listeners and subscribers to our Substack for joining us for this discussion of This Is Democracy.

Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy. This week, we are going to talk about a figure who played a major role in American history and the history of civil rights writ large, but a figure who's somewhat forgotten in many of our contemporary discussions. This is Hubert Humphrey, who was the mayor of Minneapolis and one of the most prominent members of the U.S. Senate for the second half of the 20th century. He was vice president and in 1968, a presidential candidate. We are fortunate today to be joined by a leading author and journalist and friend who has written a phenomenal book. It's a book that in some ways is a love letter to Hubert Humphrey and a wonderful explication of his life and a wonderful analysis of civil rights, of African American and Jewish relations in the United States. The author and friend and guest today is Samuel G. Friedman and his book that I highly recommend to all of our listeners, a book I will probably assign to my students in the spring, Into the Bright Sunshine, Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights. Sam is the author of many other books, including Upon This Rock, The Miracles of a Black Church, Jew versus Jew, The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry. I believe his most recent book before this one, Breaking the Line, The Season in Black College Football that Transformed the Game and Changed the Course of Civil Rights. We'll see if UT can change the game this year, being number one in the country. Sam is a former columnist for the New York Times and he's a current professor of journalism at Columbia University. So, Professor Friedman, thank you for joining us.

The old days. Are you referring to the days before you left our house for college?

Older days than those.

Oh, okay, okay. Very good. What you would call ancient history, huh?

It's a cave! (Laughs) Exactly. All right, Zachary, let's hear it.

What's your poem about, Zachary?

Yeah, I think there's a point in that, right? It's an age-old struggle, isn’t it?

Right. I mean, he's central to the story of civil rights in post-war America, though largely forgotten. Your book focuses almost exclusively on that, taking us really from Humphrey's birth in the early 20th century through 1948, through the Democratic Convention in 1948, which is really your crescendo, Humphrey's speech at the convention calling for civil rights. How does a young man like Humphrey, who's born in South Dakota, come to be a proponent of civil rights from a rural South Dakota background?

One of the strengths of your book, Sam, for me as a reader, were your vivid descriptions of what it was like for Hubert Humphrey to travel by bus to LSU for the first time, to cross the Mason-Dixon line, and then, as you say, to go home, to go back to Minneapolis.

Another contribution that I think reflects you as a lifetime scholar is how much of it is about the Jewish American experience as well... Tell us about the connections in your mind between civil rights, African American communities, Jewish American communities.

Fascinating.

Zachary? You mentioned that the impetus for this book was to try and rewrite or at least capture the historical moment after World War II when Americans were faced with the decision about what a post-war United States would look like. How do you think this story about Minneapolis, about Hubert Humphrey, should change our view, our understanding of that immediate post-war period?

That context is really helpful... Truman does, as you say, in 1948, embrace a civil rights plank, the minority report in the Democratic Party, and he runs on that. He desegregates the armed forces. He’s also the president who recognizes the state of Israel.

It's interesting how important these personal experiences are... It’s also interesting, Sam, how politics pushes against that at times. What you’re describing in the 1948 Democratic Convention is pretty similar to the 1964 Convention, where Johnson refuses to seat the Mississippi Free Democrats. How does Humphrey push through?

How do we maintain optimism without becoming Pollyannish? What, what, what is the appropriate level of optimism? I’m often criticized for being too optimistic by my son, by Zachary, and by others. How do we find that right balance? Because empty hopefulness can become hopeless as well, right?

Not at all. Not at all. And certainly someone who’s my hero, Franklin Roosevelt, as you alluded to before, refused to sign anti lynching legislation. So the compromises, the dirty compromises of politics have a long history, unfortunately. Sam, I wanted to close us out by asking you one final question. Um, and I think it speaks to our moment and it speaks to your scholarship and it’s something that I struggle with, I know Zachary struggles with, I know many of our listeners struggle with. Um, you’re someone who’s deeply concerned and committed to combating anti Semitism. It’s in your scholarship. It’s in your journalism. It’s how I first encountered your work, actually. Oh, thank you. Uh, and you’re someone obviously deeply committed to civil rights, telling the story of civil rights. How do you think about these issues today with this historical vision with, um, uh, the challenges we face. Um, what is it? How do you as someone concerned about anti Semitism and racism approach our current world?

Well, I think that’s the subject for another show, but I also deeply appreciate Sam, your reflecting on that and you’re displaying what I think is essential to being a serious historian and writer, which is to take the past on its own terms. But also think about the past in light of the present. That's not anachronistic. That's actually why every generation rewrites the history of what came before. Sam, thank you so much for being with us today.

I want to encourage all of our listeners to get a copy or two copies of Sam’s book, uh, into the bright sunshine young. Hubert Humphrey and the fight for civil rights. Zachary, thank you for your poem and your insights today. Thank you. And thank you most of all to our loyal listeners and our loyal subscribers to our substack for joining us for this week of This Is Democracy. This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts ITS Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harris Codini. Stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find This Is Democracy on Apple Podcasts. Spotify and Stitcher. See you next time.

Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. Today, we are joined by an author, professor, scholar of Barbara Jordan's life. Barbara Jordan, as we'll discuss, was a pioneering legislator and pioneering politician and civil rights activist in the United States. She left an incredible legacy, and we're fortunate today to have an opportunity to talk about Barbara Jordan and her legacy, and what that legacy means in the tumultuous world we live in now.

We're going to discuss Barbara Jordan's life and legacy with Professor Mary Ellen Curtin. Mary Ellen Curtin is an associate professor in the Department of Critical Race, Gender and Culture Studies and director of American Studies at American University in Washington, DC, which has a beautiful campus. It's a university I always enjoy visiting.

Mary Ellen is the author of two books, the book she wrote a number of years ago Black Prisoners and Their World Alabama, 1865-1900 really a pioneering book looking at convict labor and the use of convict labor in the justice and political system in Alabama and much of the South during the second half of the 19th century, and most recently, the book we're going to discuss today, the book I hope everyone will purchase and read, is called She Changed the Nation: Barbara Jordan's Life and Legacy in Black Politics. It's hot off the presses, and as soon as it came out, I grabbed a copy and made sure to read it. And it's really an extraordinary book about Barbara Jordan and her life. Mary Ellen, thank you for joining us.

Before we get into our discussion of Barbara Jordan with Mary Ellen Curtin, we have, of course, Mr. Zachary Suri's scene setting poem. What's the title of your poem today, Zachary?

Let's hear it.

I love that closing line. Radical grin. Mary Ellen, I saw you reacting to the poem. What do you think?

What's your poem about, Zachary?

Yes, well said. Well said. Mary Ellen, why did you write this book about Barbara Jordan and all the things she did as the first?

I think you do an extraordinary job with that. I learned so much about Houston and so much about what it was like to be a lawyer, as Barbara Jordan was from 1959 until the mid 1960s and then what it was like to run races in Houston and to lose races, as she did her first few times through. There's so many things in which she was the first, (correct) just as Zachary indicated in his poem, she was one of only three Black women, you say, who became a lawyer in Texas in 1959, one of only three Black women. Then she was the first African American woman in the Texas Senate, in the state legislature, and then the first African American woman from the South in the US Congress. And that's when she was elected in 1972 when I was born. It's not that long ago. (No, no, it isn't. It is not.) What What made this moment that she was in such a moment of change?

Wow, wow. She was a trailblazer. (she certainly was, yes) Zachary?

It's interesting because one of the points you make so well in the book, and you make it repeatedly, is that there's a civil rights agenda that involves working in and through the system. That those who are marching in the streets, who Barbara Jordan certainly sympathizes with and sometimes joins, that's one approach, and a valuable and necessary approach. But your argument is that getting into the system and working through the system is absolutely crucial. Do you want to say more about that?

So, well said, so well said. So, what makes Barbara Jordan famous is her election to Congress, of course, in 1972, the first Black woman elected to Congress from the entire South. And then, of course, during the Watergate Hearings, which you describe in here, are her extraordinary speech about the ideals of the Constitution and why presidents need to be held to the law, which is, you know, a little relevant for today, as well, explain that evolution in Barbara Jordan, to me, it's a fascinating part of this book.

You know, the combination, Mary Ellen, of faith in the system, articulateness, the way she speaks, that voice, as you call it, right, that deep, resonant voice with the high minded articulation. It reminds me so much, as I think about it, of someone else we talked to a few months ago, Ruth Simmons, who also comes from this part of Texas, grew up in the Fifth Ward of Houston, in part after her family moved from a rural sharecropping area. And Ruth kind of sounds like like Barbara Jordan, tell us about the voice, about the way of carrying oneself? Your book is wonderful on that.

It's such an important part of the Civil Rights Movement, if you think of again the high diction of Martin Luther King Jr, and you think about even Malcolm X in his own way, right? I mean, there's a way in which these activists are taking the English language, sort of as Churchill says, and sending it to war for them, right? (Mh-hm) Using it to articulate and persuade and motivate people, yes?

Yeah. Your book makes the case so well that she's not only a trailblazer, but that she actually provides some of the tools that those who come after her will use that people like AOC and various others will draw on from her. For today, for this moment we're in today, which is such a difficult time, especially for the ideals of Barbara Jordan, what does she offer us today?

Do you think she would tell the Democratic Party today that they need to reach out to different voters in different ways?

What's so wonderful about your book, among many things, Mary Ellen, is that you deal with both the structural factors and the role of an individual. And you show that Barbara Jordan was an extraordinary speaker, thinker, coalition builder, a larger than life personality that allowed her to transform our politics, but she did it by strategically taking advantage of changes in her time. And I think that's the lesson, isn't it?

That's extraordinary. That's extraordinary. Zachary, as we close, do you think Barbara Jordan's legacy, can be inspiring for your generation?

(Well said) I think that's spot on. Well said, Zachary. Thank you, Mary Ellen, for joining us today. I want to encourage all of our listeners to read Mary Ellen's really wonderful, entertaining, insightful book, She Changed the Nation: Barbara Jordan's Life and Legacy in Black Politics. It's really worth a read, and I will soon be assigning it to my students, so they won't have much choice.

Zachary, thank you for your moving poem, "Trailblazer." And, uh, thank you most of all to our loyal listeners and our loyal readers of our Substack for joining us this week for This Is Democracy.

Good morning, Zachary.

Uh, Steve, one of the, one of the points you make, uh, from very beginning, uh, of the book is that the constitution, this is your chapter in particular, unbounded resilience, that the Constitution was built around, um, limiting, limiting, uh, those who participated in it. And through limiting the participants, it actually, uh, made it easier to form consensus. And at some level that. Putting together, uh, keeping a consensus together seems crucial for you. Why? Why is that? So, why, why, why wouldn’t the opposite argument, the one that I think I’ve often made be true, which is the way I think of Madison’s argument on pluralism, that being large and being unbound. It means that, as we did throughout the 19th century, you know, you can add two new territories, one for one side, one Democratic, one Democratic territory, one wig or Republican territory. Um, why isn’t that, why isn’t the unbounding, uh, actually an advantage?

So, I especially reading the, the latter half of your book, uh, Steve, you make a, a compelling case that you, that you just started to make that, that we’ve outgrown the, uh, the design and the architecture of our, of our constitution as it is. And you seem to lean toward building, as you say, a, a civic and and con conversation, a dialogue, uh, An educated Dewey instead of discussions.That would lead to some sort of. New constitution, some sort of formal or informal constitutional convention. Um, first of all, are, are you confident that could happen? But, but the secondary question is, is that the right way to go? Or, or maybe the error of constitutional democracies, um, has passed, right? I mean, there are many democracies, the English one of course, that, that operate without a constitution and have operated reasonably successfully, so. I I, is it worth going that route or is it worth finding an alternative to a constitution at, at all?

If I could follow up quickly, Steve, a, a, a historical question. As I was reading your book and, and thinking about what you just said, which I think follows beautifully from your argument, I started to think, well, maybe this was actually an oversight by Lincoln because if there was a moment when there might have been, uh, a political entity that could have done what you just said, it might have been the Republican party in 1865, 1866.

Right?

Uh, Steve, I wanted to ask you a question that connects your analysis to some of the contemporary debates. You, you do this again toward the end of the book. Um, individuals like my own governor in Texas, Greg Abbott, have called for a constitutional convention. Uh, and, and of course many states, uh, especially after the Civil War, had constitutional conventions to rewrite their constitutions. Um, do are, are you in favor of that now, or, uh, how do you think we should move forward? Now after reading your book, if we’re persuaded by your argument,

Right. So, so, so what should we do, Steve?

Yeah.

Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy. Today, we are going to talk about US Latin American relations. We're going to focus on one of the most important and enduring crises of US Latin American relations, the Cuban Missile Crisis, which everyone knows about. And then we're gonna also talk about the legacies of that moment for our own moment today, when the United States appears to be, uh, in a major crisis with Venezuela. We are fortunate to be joined by, uh, someone who I think is doing, uh, the most important and groundbreaking work on US Latin American relations. Uh, this is Professor Renata Keller. She's an associate professor of history at the University of Nevada, Reno. Uh, thank you for joining us, Rennie.

Renata Keller, uh, is an accomplished author. This is the second book that she has recently published. Her first book was called Mexico's Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution. It's a wonderful book that grew out of her dissertation, written, I'm proud to say, at the University of Texas at Austin.

Go Longhorns, and, uh, Rennie's new book. The book I encourage everyone to read. I just finished it a couple of days ago and it really, really is a book that makes you think, think more broadly about the Cuban Missile Crisis and about the impact of the United States and the region. Uh, this new book is called The Fate of the Americas: The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Hemispheric Cold War. Before we get into our discussion of, uh, Rene's fantastic work and its, uh, relevance for us today, uh, we're going to start, I think almost by necessity, uh, with Bob Dylan today. Uh, often we have a, a poem from, uh, Mr. Zachary, but today we're gonna, we, we don't have Mr. Zachary's poem. He's with us on the podcast, of course, but, um, we have instead Bob Dylan not quite as good as, as one of your poems, Zachary, right?

Uh, so we have Bob Dylan, uh, and this is from one of, uh, my favorite Bob Dylan songs. I have so many. Um, this is called Masters of War. This was originally written by Bob Dylan in late 1962 in the days and weeks after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and then first recorded in early 1963. So here we're getting, uh, this extraordinary artist's reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis. And, um, if he had Rennie Keller's book, then he would've been reacting to that too, I'm sure. So here we have, uh, the first three stanzas of this incredible song about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Come you Masters of War, you that build the big guns, you that build the death planes you that build all the bombs, you that hide behind the walls, you that hide behind the desks. I just want you to know, I can see through your masks, you that never done nothing but build to destroy. You play with my world like it's your little toy. You put a gun in my hand and you hide from my eyes and you turn and run farther when the fast bullets fly. Like Judas of old, you lie and deceive a world war can be won. You want me to believe? But I see through your eyes and I see through your brain, like I see through the water that runs down my drain Rennie as, uh, as a scholar of the Cuban Missile Crisis and a scholar of US Latin American relations. How do you think about Bob Dylan's angry words in the context of that moment?

One of the things that was really interesting to me in your book was to think about the different kinds of reactions in different countries. It's really not fair to say there was one reaction to the crisis in this incredibly diverse region. How do you think about some of the reactions from some of the different countries in the region?

Zachary.

I'm glad you brought up the Kennedy tapes, Rennie, because, as you say, they're an extraordinary resource. We have recordings and transcripts from basically every one of the meetings of this special committee of his closest advisors that President Kennedy put together during the two weeks of the crisis. The editors of one version of the Kennedy tapes, Philip Zelikow and Ernest may are among a group of historians who have seen the Cuban Missile Crisis as a great triumph for Kennedy, not because of the danger that came with it, but because of the way they believe he managed, managed the communications with the Soviet Union, managed communications with the American public, and negotiated out of this crisis that could have gone to nuclear war. You don't seem to have the same heroic view of the Kennedy administration. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you're view differs from what I think is that more conventional view.

Zachary

One of the really interesting conclusions you draw. And I guess it's really two conclusions in one is that, on the one hand, you say the Cuban Missile Crisis shattered some of the solidarity among Latin American countries. You've talked about this already, the ways in which different countries reacted to it. At the same time, you make a very powerful argument that the crisis contributed to the negotiation of the first nuclear-free zone treaty, the Treaty of Tlatelolco in 1967, which most people don't know about, but created a nuclear weapons-free zone, which remains the case to this day in that region. I'd love to hear you reflect on what brought us from the Cuban Missile Crisis to this moment of horror to this moment of nuclear disarmament.

And I guess that, to me, is is a bridge to where we are today. It does seem that in the decades after the Cuban Missile Crisis, there are a number of efforts that are made not only to limit nuclear weapons in the region, but also to limit American and Soviet and other, I guess, Chinese military activity in the region, and although the United States is involved in many covert activities supporting groups like the Contras and Nicaragua invading Grenada, nonetheless, you could argue that we at least avoid another big crisis like The Cuban missile crisis. But then I look at Venezuela today, and I wonder, if you, as a historian, see certain parallels to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Obviously, there's no Soviet presence in the region, but, but there is, of course, a Russian and a Chinese presence. And you know, it does seem, as the United States is has mobilized the largest force in its Southern Command, present and at sea around Venezuela, and is using force to destroy boats rather than interdict boats on the high seas. How do you think about this moment in relation to what you've just written about.

Zachary

That's very well said. Rennie. I also wonder if there's a lesson about the difficulties, perhaps the hazards of regime change the Trump administration is in a long line of American presidents, Democrat and Republican, who have perhaps overestimated the ability of the United States to force someone like Castro, who Kennedy was obsessed with, of course, or Maduro, who Trump seems to be obsessed with, they've overestimated the ability of the United States to overthrow them. What would you say about that?

So perhaps it's an unfair question, but I'm going to ask you anyway, if we shouldn't, in your reading as a historian, or if we should at least be cautious about trying to overthrow someone like Castro or Maduro. And let's be clear, these are in some ways, horrible dictators. What should we do? Should we just accept them in power? What should we do?

That makes a lot of sense. Zachary to close, what do you think does, does working through regional organizations resonate, you think, with young people who care about this region? Does this analysis as a whole, does the Cuban Missile Crisis and the lessons that Rennie has laid out? So I think so clearly, do do they resonate? Or, how do you think? You know young educated Americans who think about these issues, how do they have they approach this?

That makes a lot of sense. That's That's well said, and I think it resonates with our friend Bob Dylan, getting us to think not of ourselves as Masters of War. But I think what Rennie is talking about is masters, perhaps, of peace and negotiation. And I love Rennie. I love everything about your book, but I love in particular the way in which you do take us to the story of the Treaty of Tlatelolco and the efforts to to build peace in the region after this horrible, horrible crisis and the the nearness of extinction. I really think there's, there's a there's a lesson in that. I want to encourage all of our listeners to buy Rennie's book and read it the fate of the Americas, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the hemispheric Cold War. It has a beautiful paperback version that's already out so it's readily accessible and can be read in all settings. Rennie, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your wisdom on our podcast this morning.

It was indeed. Thank you, of course, to Zachary Suri as well for participating in the conversation and helping to always make sure that we're not flying off into never, never land of academic discussion and keeping us grounded in so many ways. And thank you most of all to our loyal listeners and loyal subscribers to our sub stack. Thank you for joining us for this episode of This is Democracy.

Hi, Zachary and Michael. So happy to be with you.

Michael, why did we come to this moment now where the United States seems to believe it has or the President of the United States at least, seems to believe he has some solution to the war, and we have key advisors, Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner going back and forth between Ukraine and Russia. How did we get to this moment? It seems quite, quite surprisingly.

It seems Michael that the Trump administration believes that Putin is winning the war. Is that true? And is there a scenario where he is simply using these negotiations to make it appear to the United States that he's open to something other than a full scale conflict, buying time for himself and trying to disarm the Europeans and others who would prevent him from getting what he wants to get on the battlefield.

Michael, what are the chances that these two men at the center of this war, Putin and Zelensky, that they continue to go on as they've gone on? I mean, what's so striking to me as a historian, just just building on your last point, is how much of this war has been about the two of them, how much they have been front and center. Putin in launching this war, which was a completely unnecessary war, and Zelensky in rallying, at least initially, Ukrainians, and I think he continues to do this effectively, and rallying Europeans now, rallying Americans at different moments. So much of it has been about these two men, but history would lead us to believe that the conflict will will deteriorate their authority as well. So where do you see that going?

So, so as I understand your your analysis, Michael, you see, despite these negotiations now, you see the war really continuing as an as a conflict, as a battle of attrition between the two sides.

So, so Michael, what, what should the United States do? I mean, in a in a certain way, the peace offering by the Trump administration is a self serving act. It doesn't match with the realities on the ground. As you pointed out, on the other hand, as you say, there's a possibility of at least a short term cessation to hostilities, which which might actually be good for everyone. What should the administration do that it's not doing right now?

Michael is the missing piece though, really the security guarantee for Ukraine. And should the United States consider giving that or be being part of a security guarantee for Ukraine?

That makes sense.

And, and just because you brought it up now, Michael, I can't resist asking, how did Russia shift that, uh, balance of, in, in what we might call the drone gap now, how, how did, how did that occur? Was it simply the, the withdrawal of American support for Ukraine, or what made that shift possible?

Yes.

Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy. Today we are going to talk about civics and history, education, a topic near and dear to this podcast each week, and a topic near and dear to many people in our society today. What does it mean? To have a serious civics and historical education. Why is this important and, most interesting? Maybe why is this such a contentious issue in our society today? We are going to talk to, someone who I think has thought more about these issues than almost anyone else. I know he’s a leading scholar and pedagogical in innovator. this is Professor Steven Mintz, my colleague at the University of Texas at. Austin, Steve, welcome to our podcast.

It, is our pleasure. for those of you who don’t know Steve Min’s work, you should, he is, I think, the leading historian of, the family, child, the childhood, and, family development in American history. He is, as I said before, not only, a prolific author, but a pedagogical innovator. He was for five years. The director of the UT Systems Institute for Transformational Learning, where he did a lot of pioneering work, in online and other forms of technological education. Steve has written many prize-winning books. I’m just going to name two that I highly recommend. There are two that I certainly have learned a lot from. one is called Hux Raft. Which, by the way, has a really beautiful cover among other things. it’s a history of American childhood published, around 2004, I believe. And then his, most recent book, I believe is the Learning Centered University, making College a more developmental, transformational and Equitable Experience. a book that certainly taught me a lot about not only the, history of the university, but about, many of the challenges and opportunities that we have today. So we are very fortunate to have Steve with us, before we get into our discuss. With Steve. as always, we have an opening poem, and today it’s a poem that Zachary, you have written yourself, coming back to Your Roots as our podcast poet. Yes, Zachary?

What’s the title of your poem?

Ooh, Philadelphia. From Above. It makes me think of cream cheese. Zachary.

I love the Constitutional Convention references there. Zachary, what is your poem about?

The role that, that we play, not just relying on the image of the founders but are recreating and remaking their work every day. Yes. Steve, I think this is at the center of civics. Your thoughts on the poem.

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. I, that’s so beautifully said. Steve, and I love the Matthew Arnold, reference. why then I, is this so hard for us today? it, it seems as if we’re caught up in, not just discussions of civics and history, education, but discussions about how to talk about that. why has it become so hard for us?

Spoken like a great historian, Zachary,

Civics. You mean Zachary not physics, right?

Yeah.

Yes.

Steve, how do we determine what are the key texts and key topics that students should learn? This seems to be one of the points of debate even within the circle of those of us who believe in a backward looking, historical way of thinking about civics. What role should slavery play as often? a controversial issue. where should we bring in the role of. Certain figures who are maybe controversial, am Malcolm X, for example. So how do we think about that?

Yeah, I, couldn’t agree more as, someone who’s in part a political historian. it seems to me that whether we like it or not, presidents matter. Steve,

Yes. Yes. Zachary?

I think that’s so well said. Steve, one would think listening to you that there would be easy consensus around this and one would expect that, particularly in a state like Texas where you and I both teach that this would resonate with, Know more politically conservative ears, political conservatives who care about and claim to care a lot about presidential leadership, and executive power. why has this been so challenging? You’ve been involved deeply, through the American Historical Association and other organizations and trying to work on Texas history standards, and you have faced a lot of resistance. What’s the challenge at the state level?

And I guess why is that, Steve? That we’ve been a partisan society, speaking of political history throughout our history and, people have always distrusted the other side. Just go back to the founding moment in Jefferson and Hamilton. they, accused each other of bad faith, as did Hamilton and, Aaron Burr. So, what, is it right now that makes this so much more difficult than it was in prior moments?

Right?

That makes, perfect sense. so say more s Steve about what you are proposing for history standards, what you are seeking to, to do, to correct the partisanship and the bias that you see. harming our discussion

This is Texas State law you’re talking about?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the, standard should lay out broad learning objectives, make perhaps suggestions of particular texts that can be used and then leave things to the local teachers to take it from there. Correct.

You know an old question that goes back to, the scopes trial and much earlier is, how do we fit religion into this? it’s not only in Texas, but it certainly is in Texas where we have, groups that, for instance, believe the Constitution was written by God. how do we, address that? They, would argue that under your model, their point of view will be excluded

Right. One would think that would fall under separation of church and state also, Steve?

Zachary.

Do you think, Steve, that this has been, a lacuna in the past, is that a fair criticism of past standards?

Right?

Yes.

Again, spoken like a great historian. You’ve given us so much. Steve, before we finish, I can’t help but ask you about technology. I think we need to talk about technology a little bit, especially because you’ve been such a pioneer. What role should technology play in this discussion?

Yes, I love that. I need to try the Columbus simulator myself. That sounds fascinating. I love how that makes the history, first of all, more tangible for students, Steve, but it also makes it more fun. It seems to me it’s a real great way to use technology, not to dumb things down, but to meet our audience where it is.

Zachary, how do you think about all this? As someone who’s studying history in college now, and of course has just recently gone through high school history and all the, challenges of that, how do you think about history standards and does what Steve says here, does it resonate with you?

Yeah. It’s really interesting. What, you say, Zachary? I’ve been struck, our daughter, Natalie, is teaching in fifth grade in San Antonio now through Teach for America, and they give almost no time to history or what they call social studies. It’s all math and science. I think this is part of the problem, too, Steve, isn’t it? That there’s just not. Actual attention in the classroom to history for a sufficient amount of time and space.

Yes.

This is something that both you and I and many of our colleagues participate in through, groups like the Gilda Lehrman Institute, humanities, Texas, other humanities councils around the country where teachers and historians come together. To discuss exactly these issues. And, I think where we are most helpful as historians, as you said, Steve, is sharing anecdotes and sharing primary sources that can be used, in this context to close us out, at least for the, for this discussion today. Steve, what should non-teachers who care about and non-pro professors who care about these issues, what should they do? What should ordinary citizens be doing right now? if they care about history as we do, how can they get involved? How can they, help you in your efforts?

That sounds so persuasive and so compelling. I hope people listen. I hope that is the direction that comments go at school board meetings, too often people are arguing over some political issue, not over. What it seems to me is the meat and potatoes of this, which you just, I think, have highlighted so well. Professor Steven Minz, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for all of the work you do in this. Area, not just as a historian, but also in some ways as a, as an activist for the di discipline of history. Thank you, Steve.

And thank you, Zachary, of course, for your moving poem, that got us started with the founders in Philadelphia and for your excellent questions. And thank you, most of all, to our loyal listeners and loyal subscribers to our Substack for joining us for this week of This Is Democracy.

Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy. This is our first episode of 2026. That’s exciting, Zachary, isn’t it?

New Year, new possibilities. It’s always good to turn the page. Today we are going to not review 2025. That would take hour upon hour. And in a sense, everyone’s doing that, so we don’t need to repeat what others are doing. What we’re gonna do is talk about some of the impressions, lessons, uh, insights, um, feelings, even vibes from 2025, uh, that we’ve thought through. That we’ve discussed on this podcast in our Substack and elsewhere. And, uh, we’re gonna talk about what we think those impressions and experiences mean as we open this new year. As we open this year. Uh, still in a world of tumult. But also a world of possibility. The challenges are certainly great, uh, but the possibilities remain real and we’re gonna talk about those today. Uh, and of course I’m joined, uh, by our co-host, uh, Zachary. Siri. Zachary, did you have a good holiday?

It’s nice to be back, back at work, isn’t it?

So, uh, Zachary, you have, um, a snippet from the great George Orwell that you wanna read, and, uh, we are both big fans of Orwell’s work, as are I’m sure many of our listeners. Orwell was a fiction writer, an essayist, a journalist, uh, and, and left a legacy not only of insightful. Analysis about society, but also just good quality writing, writing that still speaks to us of the importance of words and how we use our words. So I’m gonna turn it over to you. Tell us maybe a little bit about the passage and uh, then you can go ahead and read it.

I hope everyone does that. Yeah, I think his normal behavior.

There’s a lot in that passage, Zachary. What, what’s going on there? What is Orwell saying?

Right? Justice is the aspiration more than the achievement

Now. Responding to Inhumanity with humanity. I think we all know what inhumanity is, right? And unfortunately, we were just talking about this before we, we started the recording. Uh, this was a year, maybe not with more inhumanity than other years, but certainly with a fair share of inhumanity. Um, and one, one can think about, uh, the murders, the cold-blooded murders, assassinations of, uh, a legislator and her, uh, husband in Minnesota. Followed a few months later by the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Uh, we can think also of the assassination that occurred of a insurance executive this year and, and many others. Uh, just this was a murderous year where extremists of one kind or another used excessive on un uh, un unacceptable illegitimate violence, uh, against individuals. Uh, of course there was mass violence as well. Thousands and thousands of deaths in Ukraine and elsewhere. Um, we saw also the violence and inhumanity of deportations within our own country. People being seized off the street sometimes when they had gone to a, um, immigration hearing that they were invited to, seized from a court. Uh, when they had come voluntarily to, uh, appear, uh, believing that they were getting, um, legal access to our country, but instead being in a sense kidnapped and often. Deported to a country that he never had any connection to. Uh, El Salvador, Sudan, uh, things of that sort. So, so there was plenty of inhumanity, uh, and plenty of inhumanity with all kinds of political stripes attached to it, uh, in all kinds of places. So I think we know what Inhumanity is and we know what Orwell’s referring to there as himself being a child of the revolutions of the 1930s and, uh, wars of the 1940s. Um. What is humanity? What, when, when, when Orwell encourages us to respond to inhumanity with humanity, to not simply respond an eye for an eye, to not simply respond to the murder of our guy by murdering their guy. Uh, what, what does he, what do you think he means? Because I think that’s the hard part here, Zachary. What do you think he means?

Right. Or replacing one tyranny with another tyranny, which is what he thinks socialism had become in his time.

Right. Right. And, and those who don’t know his history, it’s worth just stating Orwell had been involved in the, uh, fight against fascism in Spain. And became deeply disillusioned with the socialists who were in many ways leading the anti-fascist fight for becoming, uh, in their own partisan work, a tyranny of their own against the tyranny, the horrible tyranny. They were, they were fighting. I, I think there were examples maybe to help us, uh, from this year describe what humanity in response to inhumanity is. There were examples we saw of this one that certainly moved me and I think moved you even more, Zachary. Was the experience of, uh, the hostages, uh, hostages in, um, Israel, uh, Israelis who had been taken hostage brutally by Hamas. Uh, some of them held hostage for more than two years. Uh, and the release of those high hostages, uh, in many ways, uh. Their experiences once released. Um, I know you had the opportunity to talk to a few of these former hostages yourself, Zachary. My impression is that they, after being released from this nightmare-ish horror that I cannot even imagine, um, it’s not that they. Wanted to forgive Hamas. They certainly didn’t. Uh, there’s nothing that says we have to forgive the people who do horrible things to us, but they also, it seems to me, became voices against more violence and voices for peace. Is is that right?

It, it reminds me in some ways of, of watching from afar. And reading of the lives of people like Eli Viel. Yeah, Nelson Mandela. I mean, these are larger than life figures in some ways, although actually Eli Viel was a figure of very small stature. But these are individuals intellectually and in their image of they’re larger than, larger than life, but in some ways, like these former hostages, they were ordinary people who had suffered the unthinkable and then came out as voices, not a vengeance. Not of revenge nor of forgiveness, but voices of finding a common brotherhood and sisterhood in our response to the horrors that we’ve experienced. Yes.

Yes.

and Uvalde.

You know, I think as you speak, there’s a real insight in that. I mean, I think one of the real elements of, of humanity, what humanizes an inhumane situation, what I think Orwell is referring to, and, but he’s criticizing among socialists and fascists is the depersonalization of things.

Uh, it’s, it’s, it’s easy to support a cause. That kills a lot of people when you don’t think about the people you’re killing. Right? But what these former hostages have done is they’ve brought out, it doesn’t matter what your political position is on Israeli politics or on Middle East politics, they remind you of the individuals and the suffering that cannot be justified.

Yes.

Totally.

and the self-doubt.

And, and I think it’s our obligation. And one of the lessons from 2025, if I might say, is to avoid the effort to oversimplify what social media encourages. Encouraging us to find the good guys and the bad guys and to recognize without apologizing for. Uh, unacceptable behavior, illegal behavior, uh, immoral behavior, recognizing that in many cases, um, people are driven by complex experiences and motives. As you were speaking of the hostages, I was thinking of so many, uh, immigrants to the United States who have now been swept up by ice. Um, many of whom actually did break a law. Maybe they came on a student visa and overed. Maybe they came on a tourist visa at overstate, but then they’ve lived here for 10 years, 12 years. They’ve raised a family, they’ve worked diligently, and the reason they didn’t go back to their country, this could be true for our great grandparents, Zachary, the reason they didn’t go back was not because they wanted to break a law here, but because they were afraid to go back and face persecution or face abject poverty. Um, so are they people who broke a law? Maybe. But should they be deported for that as criminals? That’s, that’s a complex story, right? And we should avoid these simple, simple categories. Um, I think about that at universities too. As a, as a professor, as someone watching at my university, university of Texas and elsewhere, major changes in controversy swirling around everything we do. From discussions of diversity to curriculum, to hiring, to leadership, to funding, you know, um, one doesn’t have to believe that universities were perfect. They certainly weren’t. To also believe that there’s something that needs to be saved and preserved in academic freedom, an open inquiry. And, uh, we become oversimplified and polarized. And are you for DEI or against DEI? Well, I’m both. Are you, uh, for, um, people being free to think and speak as they wish, uh, or are you for protecting people from facing antisemitism? anti-ISIS, Islamophobia and things of that sort. Well, um, for both of those too, right? I mean, these are, these are complex issues we have to navigate. And I think 2025 has taught us, and I have a sense a lot of people coming out of 2025 realizing this, that the simple categories are not the realities, the complex realities, uh, we, we face. Uh, may, maybe one of the lessons from Orwell that you’re teaching, taking us to is not only to personalize, to understand the individuals who are affected by big ideas, but also. To move beyond labels. Right. Uh, Orwell’s not only attacking the socialist party, he’s attacking the label.

Yeah. Well this is sort of replacing a toothache with a toothache, right? Yeah. They’re, they’re, they’re recreating, they’re mirroring the problem that they saw by doing the exact opposite. I think that’s definitely happened. Um, I don’t know if you agree. I think that we, and I said this before in our podcast and in many other settings, um, I think we went too far with certain elements of DEI. Demanding, you know, diversity statements from people in a kind of McCarthyite way, loyalty oaths to diversity. And I think we went too far. Um, but I think now the response to having gone too far is going much too far in the other direction, to the point where now diversity has become a dirty word for some people. And you’re not supposed to, uh, assign. Work that points to perhaps the critical and not savory parts of our history, um, that that’s overreacting in the other direction. That’s mirroring, that’s a toothache for a toothache. Uh, if you’re against, um, preference for one direction, there shouldn’t be preference in the other direction either. And, and I think, I think one of the lessons we have to learn is that if we’re not attentive to complexity, all we do is just, uh, swing the, the spectrum back and forth. It’s like a seesaw. Rather than progress. So, so that brings us to, I think, the theme we wanted to close on, which is community. Um, I, I think one of the real, um, outcomes of 2025 is I’ve seen this with my students, with my colleagues around the country. I’ve seen this with all kinds of settings I’ve been in. People seem to be returning to community. They seem to have found in many cases that the world and the lives they were living. Online and elsewhere, we’re not satisfied. Clearly people are still living in those ways. Uh, but there is, there does seem to be a return to community and, um, I don’t know. It might be worth talking about that. I think that’s been an important part of your experience also. Right, Zachary?

And, and that’s exactly why we do this podcast. Right? It’s, it’s exactly, uh, for that reason. So, so what does it mean then people, I mean, everyone is now saying that, right? Viewpoint diversity. More open conversation, civility, but people talk about it more than they actually do it. What does it actually mean to do it? What are some examples that we can close on, some hopeful examples from 2025 that can take us into 2026?

Yeah

And, and I’ve come to conclude, Zachary, that actually the way to do this is not to say, okay, we’re going to have an open conversation or viewpoint diversity. It becomes artificial in that sense. Yes. It’s creating a culture for that. Yes. It’s, it’s honestly what I strive to do in the classroom, in my professional settings, in my work. Uh, I don’t know if I succeed, but it’s certainly what I strive to do, what I’m doubling down on, which is, um. Cultivating a sense, a healthy skepticism toward any orthodoxy, which hopefully open space then for nothing to be sacred, but everything to be respected if it’s serious. So a serious idea should not be condescended to, but it shouldn’t be taken as an orthodoxy. That is beyond question, and that allows us then to take. Complex ideas such as, you know, the defense of the state of Israel or the defense of the stateless, uh, in areas that are occupied by Israel. Take these difficult problems and recognize that neither side has a monopoly of truth. And open the space where it is encouraged for people to ask hard questions. It doesn’t happen in one conversation. It happens in a culture that you create in a classroom, in a work setting. In your scholarship, in your public persona. And, and I think 2025 showed us, first of all, how hard it is to do that. It showed us how hard we need to work on that. And, and I think it did give us some examples, uh, of this. Um, I, I think we saw from certain religious leaders an incredible openness, uh, and cultivation of that kind of culture. Uh, this, this year, I think of the bishops and others who spoke out. In defense of immigrants, but didn’t speak out in defense of open borders. They weren’t talking about opening borders, they were talking about the humanity of immigrants. Um, I think of all the teachers I’ve witnessed, I work with a lot of teachers around the country, um, who have, who have done this in their classrooms. They’re unsung heroes. They don’t get, this doesn’t get talked about. I’ve seen this also with law enforcement officers build trust in their local communities. You know, this is happening every day. We just don’t focus on it because we don’t value it enough, but it’s actually the story that we, we, we should focus on. I think it’s what is happening. In many parts of our universities, it’s not always happening and sometimes it’s missing, uh, but it is happening in many parts of our universities.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. I think that’s, I think that’s absolutely right and I think that might be, gives us the, the proper, not close to this episode, but the proper opening to 2026, finding more ways. To create a culture, a space, an assumption of, as you said, and those are fireworks outside of our door here. Uh, as you said, Zachary heterogeneity, difference of viewpoint, um, and encouraging conversation, repeated conversation. Uh, my frustration has been that many people who know this don’t take the time to do this. All of us as leaders. All of us as individuals and communities should do more to reach out to talk to other people, not just for one conversation where we want to hear multiple points of view, but to build a culture of conversation across points of view. And we should resist what I think is happening in too many places, including sometimes at universities where people are separated, one group versus another. Categorize in one way. Will you go in one major will be people thinking this way in another school, people thinking this way. No, we need to actually. Build true bridges and talk across communities and make that part of our daily culture, the way we, the way we operate. And I think we can do that. I think we’ve seen examples of that, and I think we now know why we need to do that. So that’s a kind of lesson from 2025. It’s an impression that can carry us into 20 20, 26. And I’m, I’m optimistic about that. You have to be hopeful about that. Do you share my hope and optimism?

Yep. Yep. So keep listening to our podcast and listen to others. Keep subscribing to our Substack. And, uh, we love when people email us as they often do with suggestions for guests and topics or

or complaints. Send the complaints to Zachary Suri. Um, uh, we are so fortunate to be able to do this, to have these conversations somewhat so as Zachary’s heard me say this, that I miss it when we don’t do it. Uh, and, uh, we will continue through this year. So thank you for joining us, uh, for a new year, and thank you in particular for joining us for this episode of This Is Democracy.

Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. Today we’re going to focus on Venezuela, one of the, most significant and confusing, I think, crises of our current moment. But a crisis in a region, of longstanding, American intervention and conflict, A crisis in a region that has gone through, extraordinary changes over the last 250 years. And a region where the United States and its relations with Venezuela and other countries have. Always been, not just complicated, but often quite controversial. we are fortunate to be drawn to, this topic, not only because of the prominence that it has in the news, but because we have a colleague who I think is one of the most interesting scholars writing on the region as a whole, who has a lot to share with us today. This is my colleague and friend, Professor Kurt Weyland. Kurt, thank you for joining us.

Kurt has been with us before. He is the Mike Hogg Professor in Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. He’s conducted original research in virtually every place one can go in South America, including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, and Venezuela. Professor Weyland is the author of seven books. All of them are worth reading. I’m going just to just name, some of my favorites, making waves, democratic contention in Europe and Latin America, which is really I think, a model of comparative politics, assault on democracy, communism, fascism and authoritarianism during the into war years. And then most recently, I believe, democracies resilience to populisms threat. So, Kurt has a strong background in the history of the region and, the dynamics of democracy, authoritarianism, and intervention, in this region. Kurt, I imagine you’ve been very busy with Venezuela in the news so much these days, yes?

It’s extraordinary. As scholars, we need to continue to study the past but also keep up with the present. It gets quite difficult after a while, doesn’t it?

Absolutely. Absolutely. We're gonna talk about all of that. I wanted to open today, by just reading, the key section from President James Monroe’s, annual address to congress. In December of 1823. So more than 200 or more than a hundred years ago. Actually, no, 200 years. More than 200 years ago. I’m gonna have to work on my math here. This is the key passage, written in fact by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. That becomes known as the Monroe Doctrine. It wasn’t known as the Monroe Doctrine initially, but it became over time known as the Monroe Doctrine. And what Monroe said was that we, the United States, owe it to candor and to the amiable relations existing between the United States. And those European powers, he means the European powers, operating empires in Latin America. We owe it to declare that we, the United States, should consider any attempt on their parts to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety with the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power. We have not interfered and shall not interfere, but with the governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and unjust principles, acknowledged we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them or controlling in any other manner their destiny by any European power. In any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States. What it seems to me, president Monroe was saying in this somewhat flowery language, was that the United States, would do all it could. To, make it difficult to not recognize, to hinder European powers from returning to colonies that they had lost in countries like Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela in this period of revolution and independence in the early 19th century. but it seems to me Monroe is not saying. United States, will necessarily intervene militarily. Kurt, how do you, as a scholar of this region, think about what the Monroe Doctrine meant for the next 200 years, bringing us to today? I, I know it’s a big question, but I’m curious your reaction to it.

That, that’s very helpful, Kurt, and insightful. And, and in a sense, recapitulates one of the classic ways of, of seeing us foreign policy toward this region, which is a tension, a constant tension between, as you say, realist, materialist impulses, and idealistic, perhaps even democratic, impulses. And you can certainly see both in the Monroe Doctrine. You mentioned the Roosevelt corollary, of course, from 19 oh. Four, which is Theodore Roosevelt’s more aggressive, contention that the United States has a right to intervene in countries that are misbehaving or are mismanaged. on the idealistic side, though, this, intervention in Venezuela, how would you characterize it? Is it, is there any idealism in it? Is it a complete rejection? Has the Trump administration gone entirely in the materialist direction? How do you think about and understand, based on the little we know so far? Of what the United States is doing in Venezuela right now.

It makes a lot of sense. Zachary has joined us now. He had some computer glitches, but we’re glad you’re with us. Zachary please.

That’s what’s striking to me, Kurt, that this has been certainly a change in the. President of of Venezuela, the Vice President Del c Rodriguez has has taken over at least as interim president, but it doesn’t seem like much else has changed yet. At the same time, president Trump is claiming that he’s running the country from the United States claiming that oil will come to the United States yet. There has been no new investment in oil infrastructure, no commitments of investment. and of course one of the problems in Venezuela is not simply, who’s in charge. It’s that the infrastructure to extract the oil is so decrepit that, that, that’s also kind of shut, shut itself down. So what has changed, if anything?

So I, I see the logic of that, but the historian in me, Kurt asks if that’s really possible. I mean, this is a regime that has many different factions as all regimes do, right? we know Rodriguez. Doesn’t command the same authority with some of the institutions, particularly the military that Maduro and, and Hugo Chavez did. And of course, the Chinese and the Russians are not just gonna sit back and watch this, right? They’re trying to bribe and threaten their own, allies and the Chinese have, have a major presence on the ground. I isn’t. The effort to do what you just said from a distance from the United States, as you say, acting as a kind of distant colonial overseer isn’t that likely to lead to factionalization internal fighting in Venezuela and and something that becomes quite disorderly that the United States either has to get involved in directly or ignore.

Right. And the Venezuelan people, it seems.

Yes, Zachary.

Of course, I mean, this is the challenge, right? That one can be, very angry about the US intervention if you’re sitting in, in Brasilia, but you don’t wanna look like you’re defending Maduro. That that’s the, that’s the challenge. Do you see the other, sorry, Craig, go ahead. I.

No, not at all. Now, on this point of realism, do you see, large countries in the region like Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia to some extent, do you see them, In, in a, in a way working closely together to combat US intervention. Now, should we view, for example, Kurt, the, Mercosur, free trade agreement that was just signed with, Europe as, as an a way of pushing back on the United States.

So, so where do we go from here? Kurt? What do you expect to see? fortunately for us, you’re not just a historian, I’m a historian. Zachary is a historian to some extent. You, you are a political scientist, so you’re supposed to know the future as well. So where do you see things going, Kurt?

Right.

Right, right. What, what, we certainly see that there are high risks, but that we don’t know, what will happen, in, in, in closing, Zachary, I want to turn to you as one of many young people in the United States watching all of this unfold. How do you see your generation of Americans, responding to this, responding to what looks so different, at least from the rhetoric of American foreign policy for so long, the rhetoric of open markets and, freedom and democracy. does this, does this contradict that or does this look like more hip hop, more, more of the same hypocrisy? How, how are people viewing this?

Right, right. I think that’s a perfect note to close on. I think it summarizes so much of what Kurt has said so well, which is, what, what we are witnessing is, a set of not historically unprecedented developments, but a set of, developments that have happened at very fast pace and have created a great deal of uncertainty. Uncertainty for the people of Venezuela, for the leadership of. Venezuela, and certainly for the United States and the world community, and this tension that, that Kurt has articulated so well between realism and idealism. It’s very hard to see where we’re going right now. And, I think that’s, that’s just one more reason why we’re going to have to watch, pay close attention and think about this in historical terms as we’ve done today. Kurt Weyland thank you so much for joining us today.

Zachary, thank you for your, excellent questions as well. And thank you most of all, to our loyal listeners and subscribers to our substack for joining us for this week of This is Democracy.

So, so David, I wanted you to reflect if you would on your students, how has this affected students and others who are obviously engaged with the issues, but also, you know, trying to, get on with their lives one way or another?

And do you find that there’s solidarity between the students and, the protestors? Are there counter student, opinions? how is it, affecting that community? I, ask in part because. You know, there’s such a history of student movements related to many of the issues we’re concerned with. Here, you’ve written a lot about this yourself, and so I wonder how you see this moment in that historical context.

So, so you see a pretty uniform, perspective from, students and, then I, would ask you sort of beyond that, do you see, or is what we’re seeing on television where the, a polarized environment of ICE and the population of Minneapolis is, two separate groups, is that a fair representation of what we’re...

Yes.

So, so is it fair, David, to call it an occupation force as a historian? Is that how you would refer to it?

What I was gonna ask David, what would improve the situation? Obviously most, certainly many, if not most residents of Minneapolis would like ice just to leave. And I would certainly feel that way if I were there. but, what short of that. we’ll bring, something back to at least, civic, normality. What, what would actually get us further along toward that end?

Nothing else.

Right. Right. That makes sense. Zachary.

Why David, do you think that in particular, in a way that to me, at least as a historian, echoes Kent State, why do you think these shootings of, Robin Goode and Alex Pretty, why do you think they’ve had such power as stories? ’cause there’s clearly been an effort by the administration to tell a different story. To make this out to be a story of domestic terrorism. And in the past that’s had some legs and it seems to have fallen flat, nationally this time. Why do you think that is?

Yeah.

Right. And, just to, focus in on this, because again, as a fellow historian who’s written about Kent State and also the, silence around Jackson State, a similar shooting on a college campus where African Americans were shot, race seems to matter here, right? The fact that these were white victims makes it more resonant, you would think Yes.

Yes.

A absolutely no, as you say, it’s a reverse of the, relationship in the 1960s and early seventies. And it’s sad because, it makes me as a historian, David, think if you don’t have at least some element of the Justice Department and some element of the executive that is concerned with enforcing federal laws at some level, it’s hard to imagine that they’ll be enforced fairly even when you have a competent state government.

Yes, exactly right.

Yeah, I, think just to build on that, David, which you said so Well, I think. What’s happened, because of the excessive gross, excessive use of force in Minneapolis is that the issue of border security, which Trump is still relatively popular on, at least with some people that’s been lost and has become a discussion instead of brutality and federal overstep. and, there’s got, I would think that Republicans would like it to come back to a discussion of border security, which would mean taking the, the lens off of Minneapolis.

So David, we, generally, close with actually a question for Zachary. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna do that and, maybe you can react to that if you have anything to say to, his, answer on this. The question we normally close on is, you know, how, are young people reacting to this young, aware, intelligent, people, the future of our democracy? And, Zachary, I mean, you’re, perfect to ask this question of, because you’ve been watching this, but you’re also far away. So, whereas David can give us both, you know, esteemed historical perspective and a personal view of it, you are, you’re watching it from far away as a young person or some background in these issues. and cares obviously, but, doesn’t have that direct, touch of this. So, so how, do you see this Zachary, and how do you think others like you are seeing what’s happening in Minneapolis?

David, any, last thoughts you wanna share? I know you’ve thought so much about this and we’re so grateful that you’ve taken the time in such stressful conditions to talk to us. any words you wanna close with?

Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy. This week we are very fortunate. We’re joined by a wonderful famous historian and also someone who I have so much, high regard for. I met her years and years ago, and I’ve been following her career for a long time, and it’s really a pleasure to finally have her on, this, podcast. This is Heather Ann Thompson. she’s a historian at the University of Michigan, where she’s a professor of course, and among many things, she’s the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize for. Her book on the Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 called Blood in the Water. Most recently, she has published this really, stimulating and in some ways angering, but angering in a useful way, book, about vigilantism and the Bernard Getz, episode, which we’ll talk about in New York City in 1984 and what happened thereafter. The book is called Fear and Fury, the Reagan eighties, Bernie Goetz Shootings. And the rebirth of White Rage. professor Heather Ann Thompson, thank you for joining us.

We’re of course, joined by Mr. Zachary Suri | as well. How are you today, Zachary?

You did not live through the early eighties in New York, so you’re gonna get quite an education today, Zachary.

No, and you touched on so many things, obviously the, recurrence of violence from our past, the economic inequalities, the nature of urban decay. You have a really, very persuasive discussion of the South Bronx at the beginning, of your book. It brought back a lot of memories, to me. just to set the scene here. For many of our listeners who probably don’t know this particular incident, what is the Bernard Goetz shooting? Who is he and what is it that happens that you describe in such detail and details that I didn’t know at the time, from December of 1984?

And just to get a couple of facts on the table that you go through in detail and document, very well in the book, the, four African American teenagers who approached him, actually, I guess only one or two approached him and they asked for $5, but they never violently threatened him. Is that correct?

Yes.

Sure. Zachary.

it’s one of the many strengths of your book in that, as you said, the cast of characters in front of us today are all displayed here in their farm system days, in a sense, right? In, a way sharpening their knives and learning their skills that they’re going to use later on for the politics of the next few decades. And that’s of course how you. Close the book, but I don’t wanna jump ahead. Why Heather, do so many people come out in support of Bernie Goetz? you have this extraordinary statistic in the book. I did not know this, that when the, police create a helpline to find tips, as you describe in the book, Bernie Getz actually goes out on the lamb. He runs to Vermont and, with a rental car and switches hotels and, is trying to stay away for a while. And you say 1500 people. Called into the, tip line soon after it was created to offer their support for the shooter. Why are people doing that?

So, so just so, we’re clear, your argument is not necessarily that all the people who express support for Bernard Goetz understand this larger architecture around them, but that architecture is manipulating the way they see this incident, yes?

Gosh.

Zachary?

It’s interesting, as you were describing that, Heather, I was also thinking of Austin, Texas, and gentrification. Yes. In Austin. It’s really interesting. I think it’s a major contribution your book is making in taking this moment and saying that’s the moment that’s pregnant for our current world. Whereas the opposite is often I think what we think, certainly what Zachary expressed is to some extent what I feel as someone who grew up in New York, I go back to New York, it has all kinds of issues, but I at least until recently thought that the New Yorker, Bernard Goetz and Edward Koch, who was mayor then and others, that that was, that has gone away. that, that heavily racialized, violent vigilante in New York had gone away. Your argument is actually, it’s the origin of where we are today. Heather?

I think so, but hopefully spinning in a productive direction. Zachary, you’ve spent a lot of time in New York City. you’re close to it and you’re there quite often. does, Heather’s account, or what parts of Heather’s account resonate most with you?

Yes. Yes. And also I think what Heather’s getting at so well is that there isn’t a certain way a crackdown on small scale violence from certain groups, but a permission structure, I don’t know if that’s a good way to talk about it, Heather, but a permission structure given to certain people to use more violence for their own defense. Is that sort of what you’re getting at, Heather?

Yeah. Yeah. I think you show a lot of, new evidence of just that point. Heather, I want us to close, this really fascinating and stimulating discussion. we in a way, as you close the book, you really are at pains in the book to bring to life. The four African American teenagers who are both, liable throughout this story, but also are, are in, are invisible to us. We can’t see them in many respects. You wanna bring them back into light. You use their names, you tell their stories beautifully, and you close with Darrell K’s story in a photo of Darrell Kabe. I just wanted to give you a chance to close, not by talking about Trump or Bernie Goetz, but. But talking about the four, the four African American teenagers.

yes. Well, I think you do that very effectively. I hope, in fact, I’m certain our listeners. Have really been, first of all, intrigued by this story, wanting to learn more, but also get a sense of the color and the, ways in which this is a big story about politics, but also a very human story with, all the elements of tragedy and villainy. bill built into it. Heather, thank you so much for joining us today.

And Zachary, of course, thank you for joining us. And I wanna just reiterate, the title of the book is Fear and Fury, and this is by Professor Heather Ann Thompson available at all of your local bookstores. And please go to your local independent bookstore. Thank you most of all to our loyal listeners and loyal subscribers to our Substack for joining us for this week of This Is Democracy.

Good morning, Zachary and Mike. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Mike, if you, with all of your expertise, had been the person charged with planning for this conflict, that you weren't, but if you were, what would you have done in terms of planning, especially for the day after the bombing?

Mike, I think your comments on will are so revealing. And as you say, will itself is not revealed until the conflict occurs. But we do know that Iranian society has existed for hundreds, thousands of years, largely uncolonized, unoccupied. How does that history play into this set of circumstances?

Just building on these very insightful comments, Mike, how should we choose leaders to work with? It seems to me as a historian that our track record is pretty poor, whether we're talking Amit Chalabi, Ngo Dinh Diem, even Hamid Karzai, right? I mean, we tend to choose people who, first of all, have dubious legitimacy with certain groups that are important to the post-war environment, as you've described it so well. And also the act of choosing them often delegitimizes them further, right? So how should we do this?

Just to follow up briefly, Mike, on those comments, as you said so well, Mike, our role is not choosing the leader, but setting conditions. What do we do if the leader who turns out to be most popular and legitimate on the ground in Iran post-Mullah is someone who's even more anti-American?

Excellent, excellent, conversation.