The Past, the Promise, the Presidency

Welcome to “The Past, The Promise, the Presidency,” a podcast about the role of the presidency in American life. This week’s episode features Dr. Frank Gavin, Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the inaugural Director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. Dr. Gavin visited Dallas in early April to speak to CPH's Article II Society members about his most recent book, Thinking Historically: A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy.  Center for Presidential History Research Assistant Kennedy Moore was joined by Assistant Director Susie Penman for a conversation with Dr. Gavin.Frank Gavin is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the inaugural Director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. He is also the chairman of the Board of Editors for the Texas National Security Review. He is a Senior Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas, a Distinguished Scholar at the University of Texas Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and an affiliate of the Security Studies Program at MIT. He is the Co-Founder, Co-Director, and Principal Investigator, with James Steinberg, of the Carnegie International Policy Scholars Consortium and Network (IPSCON), and Founder and Director of the Nuclear Studies Research Initiative (NSRI). Gavin currently serves on the CIA Historical Panel and is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations.Kennedy Moore is a junior at SMU, double majoring in public policy and music with a minor in public policy and international affairs. Kennedy is a President's Scholar, Pre-law Scholar, and Meadows Scholar. At SMU, Kennedy is involved in Hegi Board Fellows, Meadows Chorale, the Tower Center's premier undergraduate research journal The Dialogue, and works at SMU's Center for Presidential History. Kennedy is interested in educational equity and national defense. She aspires to work for a federal agency to research and create policies to protect our education system and recenter citizens' voices in policy. Susie Penman is Assistant Director of the SMU Center for Presidential History. Her area of research is southern studies, with her doctoral work specifically focused on law and politics in New Orleans in the late 20th century. Her current manuscript project studies the office of Orleans Parish District Attorney Harry Connick, Sr., exploring how local ideas about crime and punishment shifted during the three decades that he served as DA. At the Center for Presidential History, she oversees all of CPH’s oral history projects.

Welcome to “The Past, The Promise, the Presidency,” a podcast about the role of the presidency in American life. This week’s episode features Dr. Katherine Epstein, professor of history at Rutgers-Camden. Dr. Epstein will be with us here at SMU this coming Thursday, March 12, to talk about her new book, Analog Superpowers: How Twentieth-Century Technology Theft Built the National-Security State.Analog Superpowers won the 2025 Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Robert H. Ferrell (FERAL) Book Prize as well as the 2025 Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature.Center for Presidential History Research Assistant, Kennedy Moore, was joined by Associate Director Brian Franklin for a conversation with Dr. Epstein.Katherine Epstein is associate professor of history at Rutgers University-Camden and the author of Torpedo: Inventing the Military-Industrial Complex in the United States and Great Britain. Brian Franklin is the Associate Director of the SMU Center for Presidential History and an adjunct lecturer in the Clements Department of History and the University Honors Program. Dr. Franklin’s research focuses on the religious, political, and regional history of the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries. His current manuscript America’s Missions explores the role of Protestant mission societies in shaping the early American republic. He teaches courses on Texas History and American History.Kennedy Moore is a junior at SMU, double majoring in public policy and music with a minor in public policy and international affairs. Kennedy is a President's Scholar, Pre-law Scholar, and Meadows Scholar. At SMU, Kennedy is involved in Hegi Board Fellows, Meadows Chorale, the Tower Center's premier undergraduate research journal The Dialogue, and works at SMU's Center for Presidential History. Kennedy is interested in educational equity and national defense. She aspires to work for a federal agency to research and create policies to protect our education system and recenter citizens' voices in policy. 

Welcome back to Season 5 of The Past, the Promise, The Presidency, which features brief interviews with historians about their newest books.This episode features Dr. Ronald Angelo Johnson, Ralph & Bessie Mae Lynn Chair of History & Associate Professor at Baylor University. Dr. Johnson will be with us here at SMU this coming Monday, March 9, to talk about his new book, Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy During the American Revolution. Johnson offers an important and fascinating take on diplomatic history. His book explores relationships between concepts of “freedom” that animated nineteenth-century revolutions in present-day Haiti and the United States, while emphasizing the crucial roles of Black historical actors in both places. Center for Presidential History Research Assistant, Kennedy Moore, was joined by Assistant Director Susie Penman for a conversation with Dr. Johnson. Ronald Angelo Johnson holds the Ralph and Bessie Mae Lynn Chair of History at Baylor University, and specializes in early America, diplomacy, the African diaspora, and Haiti. Entangled Alliances (Cornell University Press, October 2025) is a reinterpretation of the American Revolution through analysis of diplomacy in the emerging United States during decades of hemispheric transformation. It brings to light the fascinating story of American patriots and rebels from Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) allying against European tyranny. Dr. Johnson is currently working on two book projects: the first, We Are All Equal: Turmoil and Triumph in the Early United States and Revolutionary Haiti (under contract with Princeton University Press), is a diplomatic history of race and revolution, illustrating that Americans and Haitians shared important understandings of liberty. The second, Shades of Color: Haitian Immigration and Black Identity in Early America, examines successive generations of Haitian immigrants to the United States from the Haitian Revolution throughout the nineteenth century.Kennedy Moore is a junior at SMU, double majoring in public policy and music with a minor in public policy and international affairs. Kennedy is a President's Scholar, Pre-law Scholar, and Meadows Scholar. At SMU, Kennedy is involved in Hegi Board Fellows, Meadows Chorale, the Tower Center's premier undergraduate research journal The Dialogue, and works at SMU's Center for Presidential History. Kennedy is interested in educational equity and national defense. She aspires to work for a federal agency to research and create policies to protect our education system and recenter citizens' voices in policy. Susie Penman is Assistant Director of the SMU Center for Presidential History. Her area of research is southern studies, with her doctoral work specifically focused on law and politics in New Orleans in the late 20th century. Her current manuscript project studies the office of Orleans Parish District Attorney Harry Connick, Sr., exploring how local ideas about crime and punishment shifted during the three decades that he served as DA. At the Center for Presidential History, she oversees all of CPH’s oral history projects.

Welcome back to Season 5 of The Past, the Promise, The Presidency, which features brief interviews with historians about their newest books.Our second episode features former CPH postdoctoral fellow and current associate professor of history at Florida State University Paul Renfro, who will be giving a book talk on Thursday, February 19th, at 6 pm in SMU's McCord Auditorium (Dallas Hall 306). Dr. Renfro is the author of The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America. In the 1980s, as HIV/AIDS ravaged queer communities and communities of color in the United States and beyond, a straight white teenager named Ryan White emerged as the face of the epidemic. Diagnosed with hemophilia at birth, Ryan contracted HIV through contaminated blood products. In 1985, he became a household name after he was barred from attending his Indiana middle school. As Ryan appeared on nightly news broadcasts and graced the covers of popular magazines, he was embraced by music icons and well-known athletes, achieving a curious kind of stardom. Analyzing his struggle and celebrity, Renfro’s powerful biography grapples with the contested meanings of Ryan’s life, death, and afterlives. Dr. Renfro is interviewed by CPH student research assistant Kennedy Moore. Paul Renfro is an associate professor of history and an affiliate faculty and advisory board member in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at FSU. He is the author of two books: Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State (Oxford University Press, 2020) and The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America (University of North Carolina Press, 2024), which received an honorable mention in the general nonfiction category at the Florida Book Awards. Alongside Susan Eckelmann Berghel and Sara Fieldston, Renfro also coedited the anthology Growing Up America: Youth and Politics since 1945 (University of Georgia Press, 2019). Renfro is currently writing two books. The first, titled Those Fearful Days, is a work of historical true-crime focused on the 1979–81 Atlanta youth murders, which claimed the lives of nearly thirty young, mostly poor and working-class African Americans in the self-proclaimed “city too busy to hate.” The second, The Passion of Matthew Shepard, situates Shepard’s life and 1998 murder within the broader history of the LGBTQ+ movement in the United States. Both books will be published by Liveright, a division of W. W. Norton & Company.Kennedy Moore is a junior at SMU, and is double majoring in public policy and music with a minor in public policy and international affairs. Kennedy is a President's Scholar, Pre-law Scholar, and Meadows Scholar. At SMU, Kennedy is involved in Hegi Board Fellows, Meadows Chorale, the Tower Center's premier undergraduate research journal The Dialogue, and works at SMU's Center for Presidential History. Kennedy is interested in educational equity and national defense. She aspires to work for a federal agency to research and create policies to protect our education system and recenter citizens' voices in policy. 

CPH is excited to announce Season 5 of The Past, the Promise, The Presidency. This season will feature brief interviews with historians about their newest books, ranging in topic from religious freedom to technology theft; from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River; from global diplomacy to Texas football.This week's conversation features CPH Assistant Director Ashlyn Hand, who will be giving a book talk on Thursday, September 18th, at 6 pm in SMU's McCord Auditorium (Dallas Hall 306). Dr. Hand is the author of Prioritizing Faith: International Religious Freedom and U.S. Policy Choices (1993-2017), which compares the varied approaches to promoting freedom of conscience abroad during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. Prioritizing Faith shows how evolving bureaucratic dynamics, agenda-setting processes, and strategic shifts at the presidential level interact and change U.S. policy. Dr. Hand is interviewed by CPH Associate Director Brian Franklin and CPH student research assistant Kennedy Moore. Ashlyn Hand joined SMU's Center for Presidential History in the fall of 2022. She received her Ph.D. from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin in 2021, where she was a graduate fellow at the Clements Center for National Security. Prior to joining the team at CPH, she was a fellow with the America in the World Consortium, completing a pre-doctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins SAIS (2020-2021) and a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University (2021-2022). Ashlyn’s work has been published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the Journal of Church and State and Foreign Policy.Ashlyn is the Assistant Director for Advancement and Partnerships at the Center for Presidential History and is the Program Director for the Article II Society. She is a Lecturer in Political Science, teaching classes on American politics and U.S. foreign policy.Brian Franklin is the Associate Director of the SMU Center for Presidential History and an adjunct Lecturer in the Clements Department of History and the University Honors Program. Dr. Franklin’s research focuses on the religious, political, and regional history of the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries. His current manuscript America’s Missions explores the role of Protestant mission societies in shaping the early American republic. He teaches courses on Texas History and American History.Kennedy Moore is a junior at SMU, and is double majoring in public policy and music with a minor in public policy and international affairs. Kennedy is a President's Scholar, Pre-law Scholar, and Meadows Scholar. At SMU, Kennedy is involved in Hegi Board Fellows, Meadows Chorale, the Tower Center's premier undergraduate research journal The Dialogue, and works at SMU's Center for Presidential History. Kennedy is interested in educational equity and national defense. She aspires to work for a federal agency to research and create policies to protect our education system and recenter citizens' voices in policy. 

On October 30th, 2024, CPH Director Dr. Jeffrey Engel presented a lecture as part of the SMU Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute Godbey Lecture Series, described below. A few weeks later, we sat down with Dr. Engel for a Q&A about his talk -- that conversation follows a recording of the lecture itself.Fifty Years Since Watergate: Presidential Power in the Age of Rampant Immunity and Feckless ImpeachmentsIt has been fifty years since Richard Nixon resigned the presidency. Congressional power rode high in Watergate's wake, followed by a rejuvenated judiciary and invigorated national press corps. Reports of the imperial presidency's death proved premature. The past three presidential impeachments, the first since the 1860s, resulted in zero convictions. Zero was also the conviction left among the American people that anything more than partisan politics explains those verdicts, which recent Supreme Court rulings on presidential immunity appear to vindicate. This evening will trace that history since 1974, and outline the likely future of our nation's highest office.

Lindsay Chervinsky and Matthew Costello, presidential historians and co-editors of Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture, explore the deaths and legacies of presidents. They discuss the constancy of mourning, the role of the president beyond the Oval Office, and how their deaths reveal divisions in American society. They also explore the evolution of presidential mourning, the impact of past presidents on race, and the importance of reading, history, and memory in a time of political polarization.

Political analyst and global security expert, William Inboden, discusses Ronald Reagan's presidency and the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War. They explore Reagan's enduring legacy, his ability to challenge existing thought on the Cold War, and his significant accomplishments despite his flaws and missteps.

Many Americans, if they know about Reconstruction at all, likely think of it as a failed venture. What had begun in 1865 as an opportunity to guarantee equal citizenship and rights for African Americans, fizzled out as citizens and elected officials became apathetic, or even hostile to the struggle for equality. Our guests today survey the four presidencies that touched Reconstruction—Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, and Haynes—and offer a broad-sweeping, and perhaps disappointing framing of the era. The picture they paint is one in which the ultimate fate of Reconstruction was not only understandable given the context, but regrettably predictable. This episode, we featured Dr. Joan Waugh of UCLA and Dr. Gary Gallagher of UVA, two acclaimed historians with unique insights into the nuances of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. Joan Waugh is a historian of nineteenth-century America, specializing in the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Gilded Age eras. Dr. Waugh is a frequent contributor to op-eds in publications like the Los Angeles Times and has been interviewed for many documentaries, such as the PBS series, “American Experience.” She has been honored with four teaching prizes, including UCLA’s most prestigious teaching honor, the Distinguished Teaching Award. Currently, Dr. Waugh teaches history at UCLA, where she serves as Professor Emeritus.She is the author of Unsentimental Reformer: The Life of Josephine Shaw Lowell, The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture, U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth, and The American War: A History of the Civil War Era. Visit her page on the University of California Los Angeles website.Gary Gallagher is a historian and specialist on the 19th-Century U.S. who has published widely on the history and memory of the Civil War. Dr. Gallagher has served as President of Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites and currently teaches history as a Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia. Along with his teaching, he has edited many books and won countless awards, which are listed on his biography page linked below. He is the author of The Confederate War, Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War, The American War : A History of the Civil War Era, and Reflections on the Great American Crisis.Visit his page on the University of Virginia’s website.

Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang are some of the most recognizable characters in American pop culture. From Snoopy’s doghouse to Linus’s blanket to Lucy’s perpetual football prank, the scenes from this iconic comic strip are imprinted in the memories of many Americans even today, more than 70 years after the strip’s debut. However, behind the lemonade stand, amateur psychiatric help, and baseball shenanigans, Charles Schultz placed underlying social commentary on the state of American politics and society. While many people praised Peanuts for its supposedly apolitical nature, Schulz used Peanuts to guide American households through critical issues, including the Cold War, integration, church-state relations, and more. Our conversation partner this week Dr. Blake Ball, author of Charlie Brown's America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts.  Blake Ball is a historian of American politics, society, and popular culture in the 20th century. After receiving his doctorate in history from the University of Alabama, he taught at Miles College, the University of North Alabama, and the University of Alabama. Currently, Dr. Ball teaches history at Huntingdon College, where he also chairs the History and Political Science departments.Follow him on Twitter @bsb1945.