In Berkeley Talks episode 221, American historian Heather Cox Richardson joins Dylan Penningroth, a UC Berkeley professor of law and history, in a conversation about the historical evolution of the Republican Party, and the state of U.S. politics and democracy today.
Richardson, a professor of history at Boston College, is the author of the popular nightly newsletter Letters from an American, in which she explains current political developments and relates them to historical events. With more than 3 million daily readers, Richardson says Letters has grown a “community around the world of people who are trying to reestablish a reality-based politics.”
Topics in the conversation include:
The event took place on Feb. 26 in Zellerbach Hall, and was presented by Cal Performances and the Graduate Division at UC Berkeley as part of the Charles M. and Martha Hitchcock Lectures.
More about the speakers:
Richardson has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Guardian, and is the author, most recently, of the best-selling 2023 book Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America. Penningroth is the author of the award-winning 2023 book Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights. He serves as associate dean of the Program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy at UC Berkeley Law; his scholarship focuses on African American and legal history.
Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).
Screenshot from a UC Berkeley video.
","author_name":"UC Berkeley"}