The Past, The Promise, The Presidency

This season explores one of the most pressing issues in all of American history—the country’s troubled and difficult history of race relations. This season focuses on the history of the nation’s most powerful office, the President of the United States, and its complex relationship with race. Race and the American Legacy tells the full story of our country’s past, and its promise, and what the future might hold. Americans in 2020 were determined to discuss both race and the presidency, so we figured we should at least get the history right!

This season explored well-known presidential crises and those that are rarely talked about, from the Utah War to the government shutdowns of the 1990s. In the process, we considered: what makes a presidential crisis? What is the president’s role in solving the crisis? What happens when the president makes the crisis worse? How have presidential crises changed in the last 250 years? We explored all this and more in The Past, The Promise, The Presidency, Season Two: Presidential Crises

The president has a unique position in American society: a one-of-a-kind pulpit from which they speak. And presidents have consistently used their pulpit to address a wide range of issues - from foreign policy to healthcare. This season will explore how presidents have used the bully pulpit to influence American culture and policy, and how the congregation of Americans have responded.

Season 4 highlights our upcoming or past speakers and their research on American and presidential history. Through these short conversations, we’ll provide a crash course in the breadth of presidential history, and point you to where you can learn even more.

On October 30th, 2024, CPH Director Dr. Jeffrey Engel presented a lecture as part of the SMU Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute Godbey Lecture Series, on presidential power since Watergate. 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.

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.