The History-Politics Podcast: Putting the Past to Work

Recent years have witnessed a stark rise across the globe in populist leaders whose policies are implicitly, or even explicitly, authoritarian. The policies of these leaders are sometimes at odds with their populist rhetoric in that they reward the elite few at the expense of the masses. Yet this trend is not new. As far back as ancient Egypt, we see authoritarian leaders collecting and retaining...

China-US relations have again drawn global attention after a Chinese high-altitude balloon, suspected of carrying surveillance equipment, was shot down off the Carolina coast by the United States military. Beyond concerns about espionage and national security, this incident captured the US government’s larger anxieties about China’s growing influence in international affairs, and its threat to lon...

The narrow victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as Lula, in Brazil's presidential election in November 2022 was seen by many as a win for democracy in the country. Yet as the storming of its legislature on January 8 showed, former president Jair Bolsonaro's tumultuous, populist tenure has left Brazil deeply divided. How did Lula and then Bolsonaro and then Lula again emerge...

Late in 2022, Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in Israel, despite being ousted from office in July 2021. Now starting his sixth term as Prime Minister, Netanyahu has aligned himself with a number of far-right parties, commencing what some observers have described as a “fascist” era. Professor Omar Bartov discusses the conditions that have given rise to fascist governments and applies his deep...

In September, 22-year old Mahsa Amini died after being detained by Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s dress code. Protests quickly erupted, and over the past two months they have grown into calls for regime change. How did Iran, a country that once sat at the forefront of Muslim women’s advancement, end up with such conservative gender laws? After decades of repr...

In the wake of a recent surge of antisemitism, we talk to historian David Nirenberg about what connects the hatred of Jews in the past and present. Anti-Judaism is more than simply a form of prejudice against a particular ethnicity. Rather, it is a foundational and essential idea in Western civilization which provides cultures with a way of thinking about the dangers of the world. As we connect th...

At first glance, historic preservation seems to be a key part of good urban planning.  But whom does historic preservation actually serve? In this week’s episode, our guests discuss their recent LCHP report that analyzes the power dynamics behind historic preservation.  They look at the way in which historic preservation norms have been applied as an instrument of cultural control in three Souther...

Several weeks ago, a leaked tape revealed three LA city council members and a local labor leader engaged in racist conversation. Since then, the city has been enveloped in a political crisis. The language used by the council members has been covered extensively and widely condemned. But beneath these conversations lie deep and pressing questions about Latino representation, inter-ethnic relations,...

On Sunday, September 25th, Italy held a snap election following the resignation of prime minister Mario Draghi and the dissolution of the Italian Parliament. The election resulted in a parliamentary majority a right-wing coalition led by Fratelli d’Italia (or Brothers of Italy), a far-right party with roots in postwar Italian neofascist movements. The party and its leader, new Prime Minister Giorg...

This past June, the Supreme Court reached a decision in West Virginia vs. Environmental Protection Agency that curtailed the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon emissions from coal plants. Behind this ruling was the principle of “non-delegation” — the idea that Congress cannot delegate its legislative powers, or rule-making authority, to other entities such as regulatory agencies.  While non-delegati...

This episode features a conversation with UCLA graduate and undergraduate students who authored a new LCHP report exploring the history UCLA's response to crises of major scale.  Jazz Kiang, Jannelle Dang, and Nayiri Artounians join Then & Now to discuss UCLA administrators' approaches to the student movement for ethnic studies in the late 1960s, and the on-campus killings of student...

In the wake of more horrific mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, the United States finds itself yet again engaged in a morbid ritual of horror and grief, thoughts and prayers, and renewed calls for gun control. Last week, the National Rifle Association held its annual convention, during which it steadfastly opposed calls to limit access to guns. But it has not always been that way.  The NRA, in...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In honor of Black History Month and in the midst of the Winter Olympics, we revisit this episode on the "Black Athlete" that originally aired on July 6, 2020. From Jack Johnson to Muhammed Ali, from Tommie Smith to Colin Kaepernick, Black athletes have played a huge role in the social and cultural history of the 20th and 21st centuries.  Ben Carrington, sociologist at the USC Annenberg S...

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

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