The Past, the Promise, the Presidency

Oil runs the world. From our cars to our houses, most of us can’t live without it. From the 1940s to the 1960s, though, oil played another specific role as a central part of conflict and diplomacy during the Cold War. It was during this era that Iran developed into the world’s first “petro-state”: a nation whose state revenue, industrializing economy, military, and growing middle class all depended on the growth of the oil industry. This all occurred alongside major Cold War developments, including the regime of the Iranian shah, the coup d’etat of 1953, and more. Centering our analyses of these Cold War moments around the role of petroleum casts the histories of the Iranian and US governments in an entirely new light.   Joining our conversation this week is Dr. Gregory Brew, a leading expert on the relationship between Iran, the US, and oil during the Cold War.Gregory Brew is a historian and author specializing in U.S. foreign relations, oil, Iran, and the modern Middle East. He has authored two books on the Iranian “petro-state” and contributed to numerous peer reviewed publications. His work explores the connections between the formation of a global oil economy, the geopolitics of the Cold War, and the contemporary energy transition. After receiving his doctorate from Georgetown University in June 2018, he served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Jackson School for Global Affairs at Yale University from 2021-2023. Currently, Dr. Brew is an Analyst at Eurasia Group, covering energy and Iran.He is the author of The Struggle for Iran: Oil, Autocracy, and the Cold War, 1951–1954 and Petroleum and Progress in Iran: Oil, Development, and the Cold War.Follow him on Twitter @gbrew24 and visit his website gregorybrew.com.  

Executive Order 9066, issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, stands out as a major affront to the promise of American liberty. In 1942, this executive order forced approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans out of their homes on the western coast, and incarcerated them in makeshift prisons all around the nation. Our guest today explains today that this was not only a case of civil rights being stripped from Americans, but labor rights as well. In these glorified concentration and work camps, agents of the U.S. government coerced Japanese Americans into doing hard and dangerous labor, for little-to-no compensation, sometimes even for the benefit of private, for-profit companies. This coerced labor was justified by the rhetoric of the U.S. government, even as the imprisoned resisted and persevered.  Leading this week’s conversation on coerced labor during WW2 is Dr. Stephanie Hinnershitz, award winning author and historian of Japanese American incarceration, civil-military relations, and race on the American wartime homefront. Stephanie Hinnershitz is a historian and author specializing in the American home front during World War II. She has written 3 books and became a Senior Historian with the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans in 2021.  Stephanie Hinnershitz is an author and historian with the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans. She has previously taught at Valdosta State University and Cleveland State University. In addition to her professorships, her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, the Office of Diversity at the United States Military Academy at West Point, the Library of Congress, and the American Council of Learned Societies. She is the author of Race, Religion, and Civil Rights: Asian Students on the West Coast, 1900-1968, A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South, and Japanese American Incarceration: The Camps and Coerced Labor during World War II, which won the 2022 Philip Taft Labor History Award from the Labor and Working Class History Association and Cornell University Industrial Labor Relations School.Follow her on Twitter @sdhinnershitz and visit her website stephaniehinnershitz.com. 

When we think about the history of westward expansion and the growth of state power in the United States, the postal system probably isn’t the first institution that comes to mind. But this week, that’s exactly what we’ll be exploring: the unsung power and reach of the U.S. Postal Service in the late-19th century America.It took Anglo-Americans nearly two hundred years to occupy the eastern half of what became the United States, but just one generation in the late-19th century to occupy the rest of the continent. This exponential increase in settlement speed and occupation can be attributed in large part to the sprawling geography and localized operations of the American postal system. During this era of settlement, Americans relied on letters and newspapers, magazines and pamphlets, petitions and money orders to stay connected to the world, and the post office enabled them all. It did this at such a high volume that by 1899, there were five times as many post offices in the U.S. as there are McDonald’s restaurants in the U.S. in 2023. This week’s conversation on the role of the postal system in developing the American West features Dr. Cameron Blevins of the University of Colorado Denver, author of Paper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West.

A conversation with Dr. Peniel Joseph (University of Texas at Austin) about his new book, The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century.

We welcome Dr. Spencer McBride for a conversation about his book Joseph Smith for President: The Prophet, the Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom (Oxford UP, 2021). Dr. McBride tells us about Joseph Smith's story from his days as the founder & leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, to his presidential campaign in 1844. Along the way, he explains what Smith's quixotic campaign reveals about the limits of freedom in 1844, and about our political parties today.

It’s finally here: the first episode of Conversations, Season 4 of The Past, The Promise, The Presidency! As you may have learned from previous seasons, when we at the Center for Presidential History talk about “presidential history,” we’re thinking deep and wide. And our conversations this season will be no different. The postal system, Mormons, the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, Charlie Brown: you’ll hear about all of them as presidential history this season! But this week, we’re diving straight into a topic that obviously intersects with the presidency: partisan politics. Since independence, the U.S. has seen a host of political parties. Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans, Whigs, Democrats, Anti-Masons, Populists, and more. Throughout those same decades, intra-party politics have undergone their own changes, and the Republican Party of the last three decades is no exception. This episode, we are exploring the rise of the new Republican conservatism beginning in the 1990s and tracing its evolution through the Trump presidency to today. And we’re doing that with one of the premier historians of the era: Dr. Nicole Hemmer. Hemmer is a historian and Director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the Study of the Presidency at Vanderbilt University. She specializes in the history of American media, conservatism, and the presidency, and explores all of these topics and more in her book Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s.  

In this final episode of "Cross Currents" we explore Norway's challenging balancing act in their relationship with the United States in the years after 9/11. How would Norway maintain a close partnership with the US, on the one hand, while also remaining committed to keeping NATO a strong and relevant worldwide alliance? In addition to this, Norway's leaders had to continue answering to their own domestic constituencies, reassure their European allies, and of course, achieve their own nation's long-term defense and security objectives. This episode features interviews with multiple of the key players in this balancing act, including Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, and the two leaders pictured above with US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: Norway's Defense Minister Kristin Krohn Devold and Norway's Ambassador to the US, Knut Vollebæk.

After 9/11, the United States—led by President George W. Bush—made it clear to the world they would pursue al-Qaeda and any other threats to the US national security. But rather than working directly through established security alliances like NATO, the US chose to pursue new plans, and new alliances. This shift precipitated a downturn in diplomatic relations with many nations around the world, and a critical point of decision for many others.This episode explores these diplomatic shifts and struggles through the story of the Norway-US alliance. Through firsthand testimony from Norway's leaders—including Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik—we'll explore how Norway's leaders resisted the US call to provide troops for military action in Iraq, a move that was extremely unpopular with many of their own voters. To make it even more challenging, Norway, like other NATO allies, remained anxious about US actions in the Middle East distracting them from existing European concerns.

Why Norway?! You might be asking yourself this very question as you consider the big questions of diplomacy, war, and alliances during the George W. Bush presidency. Good news - this episode is here to answer that question! This episode sets the stage for us in 2001:A new president in George W. BushAn old multilateral alliance with NATOA longtime alliance with Norway, a founding member of NATOAnd then, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, changed everything.This episode introduces those changes through the story of the solid, yet strained alliance between the United States and Norway, in the aftermath of 9/11.

Terrorists attacked the people of the United States on September 11, 2011. But those attacks--and their reverberations--were felt by peoples all around the world, including in places like Norway, for years to come. This episode explores how Norway's leaders experienced September 11, and crucially, how they navigated Norway's alliance with U.S. in the years following as American leaders moved toward war in Afghanistan and Iraq.For more on our podcast "Firsthand History" and this season "Cross Currents," visit the SMU Center for Presidential History at https://www.smu.edu/Dedman/Research/Institutes-and-Centers/Center-for-Presidential-History/Podcasts/Firsthand-History