Events are organized chronologically, with the most recent available near the top of the page.
Inaugurated in 2005, the Congressional Briefings were the Center’s first “flagship” program. Designed to provide Congressional staff with the historical context necessary to understand issues of current legislative concern, they bring leading historians to Capitol Hill to discuss the events that have influenced the evolution of current policies and alternatives.
NHC Congressional Briefing on the Ukraine Crisis: January 23, 2015*
Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University and Professor Mark Von Hagen of Arizona State University
NHC Congressional Briefing on Ebola and the African Health Crisis: November 17, 2014
Professor Randall M. Packard of Johns Hopkins University; Professor Gregg Mitman of the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Professor Julie Livingston of New York University and Rutgers University
NHC Congressional Briefing on Immigrant Entrepreneurship in Historical Perspective: September 12, 2014**
Hartmut Berghoff, Director of the German Historical Institute; Zulema Valdez, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Merced; Xiaojian Zhao, Professor of Asian American History at the University of California, Santa Barbara
NHC Congressional Briefing on Oversight of Intelligence Activities: June 9, 2014
Laura Donohue, Professor of Law at Georgetown University and director of Georgetown University’s Center on National Security; Mark Lowenthal, former assistant director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production at the Central Intelligence Agency and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University
NHC Congressional Briefing on Immigration Policy: April 5, 2013
Tyler Anbinder, Professor of History at the George Washington University; Alan M. Kraut, Professor of History at American University and fellow of the Migration Policy Institute; Mae M. Ngai, Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History at Columbia University
NHC Congressional Briefing on Space Travel: June 15, 2012
Matthew H. Hersch, Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Department of History and Sociology of Science; Joseph N. Tatarewicz, Professor of History at University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Alexander C. MacDonald, Program Executive at NASA Ames Research Center, Emerging Commercial Space Office
NHC Congressional Briefing on the Great Depression: May 21, 2009
Professor Alan Brinkley, Nevins Professor of History at Columbia University
NHC Congressional Briefing on the Federal Role in Race and Reconstruction: March 13, 2006
Eric Foner, Professor of History at Columbia University; John Hope Franklin, Professor Emeritus of History at Duke University
The National History Center’s most prominent and best-funded program is the International Seminar on Decolonization. Each summer the program brings fifteen historians near the beginning of their careers to Washington, DC for four weeks to research, discuss, and write about the phenomenon of decolonization, or the dissolution mainly of the European maritime empires in the 20th century. It also sponsors two public lectures on some aspect of the topic.
Professor Lien-Hang Nguyen of the University of Kentucky
Elizabeth Schmidt, Professor of History at Loyola University Maryland
Miscilanious Events
129th American Historical Association Annual Meeting Panel Discussion Passing the Voting Rights Act, 1965: January 4, 2015 (Audio only)
Chair: Kent Germany, University of South Carolina Columbia
Panel: Clayborne Carson, Stanford University; Alexander Keyssar, Harvard University; Dorothy Gilliam, Washington Post; David Cohen
Sponsored jointly by the National History Center and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Washington History Seminar meets each week, January to May and September to December, on Monday afternoons at 4 o’clock at the Wilson Center. It aims to facilitate understanding of contemporary affairs in light of historical knowledge of all times and all places and from a variety of perspectives.
April 2015
Sulmaan Khan, Assistant Professor of International History and Chinese Foreign Relations at Tufts University
Rivalry and Alliance Politics in Cold War Latin America: April 13, 2015
Christopher Darnton, Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Coordinator at Catholic University
March 2015
Murdering Patrice Lumumba: March 30, 2015
Bruce Kuklick, Nichols Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania
William Leogrande, Professor of Government at American University and Peter Kornbluh, Director of the National Security Archive’s Chile and Cuba Documentation Projects
African Americans’ Anticolonialism in the Early Cold War: March 9, 2015
Carol Anderson, Associate Professor of African-American Studies at Emory University
To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party: March 2, 2015
Heather Cox Richardson, Professor of History at Boston College
February 2015
The Strategist: Brent Scowcroft and the Call of National Security: February 23, 2015
Bartholomew Sparrow, Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin
Colonel House: A Biography of Woodrow Wilson’s Silent Partner: February 9, 2015
Dr. Charles E. Neu, Professor of History, Emeritus, Brown University; Adjunct Professor of History, University of Miami
Poland’s War on Radio Free Europe: February 2, 2015
Paweł Machcewicz, Professor at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences
January 2015
Josephine Roche and 20th Century Progressivism: January 12, 2015
Dr. Robyn Muncy Associate Professor of History at University of Maryland, College Park
December 2014
Human Rights before Carter: December 8, 2014
Sarah Snyder, Affiliate Assistant Professor of History at American University
Civil Rights After Martin Luther King Jr.: December 1, 2014
David Chappell, Rothbaum Professor of Modern American History at the University of Oklahoma
November 2014
Andrew O’Shaughnessy, Professor of History at the University of Virginia
April 2014
Key Figures at the End of the Cold War: April 28, 2014
James Graham Wilson, Office of the Historian at the Department of State
The Secret Ballot in the United States: April 7, 2014
Sophia Rosenfeld, Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia
January 2014
FRUS: Past, Present, and Future: January 27, 2014
Stephen Randolph, The Historian of the US Department of State
Vagrancy Laws and the Long 1960s: January 13, 2014
Risa Goluboff, Professor of Law at the University of Virginia
December 2013
Myth of Race: December 9, 2013
Jacqueline Jones, Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin
November 2013
History of Supplemental Security Income: November 4, 2013
Edward D. Berkowitz, Director of History and Public Policy Program at the George Washington University
October 2013
The Family Jewels Then and Now: October 28, 2013
John Prados, Senior Fellow and Project Director, National Security Archive, The George Washington University.
Malaria, Yellow Fever, and Independence: October 7, 2013
John McNeill, Professor of History at Georgetown University
September 2013
Latin America Encounters Nelson Rockefeller: September 30, 2013
Ernesto Capello, Associate Professor of History at Macalester College
Investing Indebtedness: World History and Impoverishment in Africa: September 16, 2013
Joseph C. Miller, T. Cary Johnson Professor at the University of Virginia
General de Gaulle and the Cold War: September 9, 2013
Garret Martin, Professional Lecturer at American University
May 2013
German Unification Twenty-Five Years Later: May 20, 2013
Konrad H. Jarausch, Senior Fellow, Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung
Lincoln and Emancipation: International Reactions: May 13, 2013
Richard J. Carwardine, Professor of American History at Oxford University
Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama :May 6, 2013
Rachel L. Swarns, Correspondent at The New York Times
April 2013
Bureaucracy, Citizenship and Remembrance in Wartime Iraq: April 22, 2013
Dina Rizk Khoury, Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at the George Washington University
Inside British Foreign Policy: April 15, 2013
Gill Bennett, Chief Historian of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 1995-2005; Senior Editor of the postwar official history of British foreign policy, Documents on British Policy Overseas
Historical Perspective on the Arab Spring: April 8, 2013
Roger Owen, Professor of Middle Eastern History at Harvard University
Weatherman Underground Terrorism: April 1, 2013
Arthur Eckstein, Professor of History and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at the University of Maryland College Park
March 2013
Stalin’s Decision for War in Korea: March 18,2013
Samuel Wells, Former Associate Director of the Woodrow Wilson Center and Former Director of the West European Studies Program
The End of Historical Enterprise: March 11, 2013
Robert Townsend, Deputy Director of the American Historical Association
A Muslim Weimar?: March 4, 2013
Charles King, Professor of International Affairs and Government, Georgetown University, and former Title VIII-Supported Short-Term Research Scholar, Kennan Institute
February 2013
Origins of the Cold War: February 4, 2013
Michael Dobbs, Former Washington Post reporter and author of One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
January 2013
Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation: January 28, 2013
Eric Foner, Professor of History at Columbia University
December 2012
Women, Ecumenism, and Interracial Organizing: December 3, 2012
Bettye Collier-Thomas, Professor of History at Temple University
May 2012
The United States, Burma, and the Cold War: May 7, 2012
Kenton Clymer, Distinguished Research Professor, Department of History, Northern Illinois University
April 2012
The Outbreak of WWI: April 16, 2012
Margaret MacMillan, Warden of St. Antony’s College and a Professor of International History at Oxford University
The Lumumba Assassination: April 9, 2012
Stephen R. Weissman, Former staff director of the House Subcommittee on Africa
Reassessing Exploration: The West in the World: April 2, 2012
Dane Kennedy, Elmer Louis Kayser Professor of History and International Affairs at the George Washington University
March 2012
Peaceful Resolution of Ethnic Tensions: March 26, 2012
Karl Meyer, New York Times; Shareen Brysac, CBS News
The End of the German Paradigm: March 19, 2012
Samuel R. Williamson, Jr., West Point, Harvard, UNC-Chapel Hill, and the University of the South
February 2012
Islam and Democracy for the 21st Century: February 13, 2012
John O. Voll, Professor of Islamic History and Associate Director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University
Barbary Coasts: North Africa, Colonialism, and the Mediterranean: February 6, 2012
Julia Clancy-Smith, Professor of History at the University of Arizona, Tucson
January 2012
Roosevelt and Churchill: January 30, 2012
Warren Kimball, Robert Treat Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University
Abraham Lincoln and the Irish: January 23, 2012
Kevin Kenny, Professor of History, Boston College
December 2011
American Exceptionalism: A Global Perspective: December 5, 2011
Thomas Bender, Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History at New York University
November 2011
Black Leaders and Leadership: November 21, 2011
Phyllis Leffler, Director of the Institute for Public History and Professor at the University of Virginia
Reassessing Walter Lippmann: November 14, 2011
Ronald Steel, Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California
Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the South: November 7, 2011 (Podcast)
Gavin Wright, William Robertson Coe Professor of American Economic History at Stanford University
October 2011
Missed Opportunities for Peace: The US, Jordan, and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War: October 31, 2011
Nigel J. Ashton, Professor and Chair of the International History Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science
Statelessness in 20th Century America: October 24, 2011
Linda K. Kerber, May Brodbeck Professor of History at the University of Iowa
The Contested Legacy of the Berlin Wall, October 17, 2011
Hope M. Harrison, Public Policy Scholar at the Wilson Center and Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at the George Washington University
Why We Botch the End of Wars: October 3, 2011
Gideon Rose, Editor of Foreign Affairs and member of the Council on Foreign Relations
September 2011
Dag Hammarskjold: His Critics and the United Nations in 1956: September 26, 2011
Wm. Roger Louis, Kerr Professor at the University of Texas at Austin
“Rogue States” and the US: September 19, 2011
Robert S. Litwack, Vice President for Scholars and Academic Relations and Director, International Security Studies
Iran in 1953 and the Uses of Middle East History: September 12, 2011
Stephen Kinzer, Professor of International Relations, Boston University
May 2011
South Africa and the End of Apartheid: May 2, 2011
Paul S. Landau, Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland
April 2011
America’s International Civil War: April 25, 2011
Don H. Doyle, Public Policy Scholar, McCausland Professor of History; Director, ARENA, Association for Research on Ethnicity and Nationalism in the Americas, University of South Carolina
Civil Military Relations: April 11, 2011
Richard H. Kohn, Professor of History and Peace, War, and Defense, Department of History, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
American Biography After the Cold War: April 4, 2011
Alice Kessler-Harris, R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History, School for International Affairs, Columbia University
March 2011
Kissinger’s Realpolitik and American Exceptionalism: March 28, 2011
Thomas Schwartz, Public Policy Scholar, Professor of History, Vanderbilt University
The Russian Imperial Legacy: March 21, 2011
Gabriel Gorodetsky, Short-Term Grant Director, Cummings Center for Russian Studies, Tel Aviv University
The “Good Occupation”: Military Government in the American Imagination: March 14, 2011
Susan Carruthers, Fellow Professor of History, Rutgers University
Rethinking the History of the French Welfare State: March 7, 2011
Katherine A. Lynch, Professor of History, Carnegie Mellon University
February 2011
Churchill’s Cold War Revisited: February 14, 2011
Klaus Larres, Public Policy Scholar Richard M Krasno Distinguished Professor in History and International Affairs at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill
Territory, Statehood, and Sovereignty: From Westphalia to Globalization: February 7, 2011
Charles S. Maier, Wilson Center distinguished scholar and the Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History at Harvard University
January 2011
Trudy H. Peterson, Consulting Archivist, Wilson Center
Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves: January 24, 2011
Sheldon Garon, Dodge Professor of History and East Asian Studies in the Department of History at Princeton University
December 2010
The Roman and British Empires: December 6, 2010
John G. A. Pocock ,Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University
November 2010
Oil and World Power: November 29, 2010
David S. Painter, Professor of International History at Georgetown University
Accidents and Axioms: The Curious History of US Foreign Policy: November 22, 2010
Philip D. Zelikow, White Burkett Miller Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in History at the University of Virginia
The Protestant Boomerang: American Missionaries and the United States: November 15, 2010
David A. Hollinger, Preston Hotchkis Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley
How Special has the Anglo-American “Special Relationship” Really Been?: November 8, 2010
Sir Brian Harrison, Emeritus Fellow of Corpus Christi College of the University of Oxford
October 2010
Cold War Legacies: October 18, 2010
Melvyn P. Leffler, Edward Stettinius Professor of American History at the University of Virginia
Secularism and Gender Equality: October 4, 2010
Joan Wallach Scott, Harold F. Linder Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study
September 2010
Reflections on the Mau Mau and the End of Empire: September 27, 2010
Caroline Elkins, Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Harvard University
Francois Mitterand and the Dilemmas of the Cold War: September 20, 2010
Frédéric Bozo, Wilson Center Fellow and Professor at the Sorbonne
Why a Congress and Not a Parliament?: September 13, 2010
Donald A. Ritchie, Historian of the United States Senate
May 2010
Changing Concepts of Love in the Eighteenth Century: May 17, 2010
Luisa Passerini, Professor of History at the University of Turin
C. Vann Woodward and the Civil Rights Movement: May 10, 2010
Sheldon Hackney, Boies Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania
The Eternal Question of Counterinsurgency: May 3, 2010
Marilyn B. Young, Professor of History at New York University
April 2010
The French and American Revolutions and Modern Democracy: April 26, 2010
David Bell, Professor of History at Princeton University
States, Nations, and the Problem of the Nation-State: April 19, 2010
James J. Sheehan, Dickason Professor in the Humanities, emeritus, at Stanford University
Rising Inequality and the Return of Jim Crow: April 5, 2010
Davin Fergus, Assistant Professor of History at Vanderbilt University
March 2010
Nikita Khrushchev and the Fate of the Soviet Union: March 29, 2010
Vladislav Zubok, Associate Professor of History at Temple University
American Ascendancy in the Pacific: March 22, 2010
Bruce Cumings, Distinguished Service Professor in History at the University of Chicago
Modern Economics and the Nemesis of History: March 15, 2010
Volker Berghahn, Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University
The History of the West Through Arab Eyes: March 8, 2010
Eugene Rogan, Professor of History at Oxford University
African Americans and Independence Struggles in Asia and Africa: March 1, 2010
Carol Anderson, Associate Professor of African-American Studies at Emory University
February 2010
Wilson Versus Wilsonian: February 22, 2010
John Milton Cooper, Jr., Fox Professor of American Institutions at the University of Wisconsin
International Human Rights in Historical Perspective: February 1, 2010
Stanley N. Katz, Director of the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at Princeton University
*Event video is not yet available
**Due to United States Senate regulations, we are unable to link video filmed within a U.S. Senate Office Building. To view this briefing, please go to the C-Span Video Library, and search the relevant video title.