Experts in the News | Miller Center

How the right became addicted to conspiracies

So why has the right become so vulnerable to conspiracy? The broader ecosystem of conservative media — even the respectable, non-conspiratorial conservative media — shares a good deal of the blame. Whether they’re talking about health-care legislation or the murder of Seth Rich, columnists and radio talkers and cable news hosts have trained conservatives to evaluate sources based on ideology, not facts or logic. Asserting that all media are biased, they have told their audiences to treat trust and truth as functions of tribalism.

Nicole Hemmer

Bodies believed to be those of 95 black forced-labor prisoners from Jim Crow era unearthed in Sugar Land after one man’s quest

The convict-leasing system proliferated across the south in the late 19th century and into the 20th, overwhelmingly targeting black Americans picked up for offenses such as vagrancy, flirting with white women or petty theft, as historian Douglas A. Blackmon reported in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Slavery by Another Name.” The prisoners were then leased by the state to private businessmen and forced to work on plantations, in coal mines and railroads, or on other state projects — such as building the entire Texas Capitol building from scratch.

Douglas Blackmon

How Asia is Viewing the Trump Presidency

Now in the second year of his term, the president has repeatedly challenged America’s commitment to free trade, its reliance on regional trade and security architecture, and its devotion to human rights. How do thoughtful Asian observers evaluate these developments? And do they regard the president’s views simply as a temporary consequence of
his unexpected election that will be swept away at the end of his term, or as deeper, more enduring trends that foreshadow the decline and retreat of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region?

Harry Harding

Ronald Reagan and the Cold War: What Mattered Most

Scholars, like contemporary observers, continue to argue heatedly over the quality of President Ronald Reagan’s strategy, diplomacy, and leadership. This paper focuses on a fascinating paradox of his presidency: By seeking to talk to Soviet leaders and end the Cold War, Reagan helped to win it.

Melvyn Leffler

Foreign Affairs

'He threw the usual playbook out the window'

On Wednesday, July 18, Miller Center Senior Fellow Eric Edelman, a 30-year veteran diplomat, former ambassador to Finland and Turkey, and former National Security Advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, offered his thoughts on President Trump's controversial press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He also assessed the president's performance during the NATO meeting that preceded it and the ongoing course of U.S. diplomacy.

‘He is honest — but smart as hell’: When Truman met Stalin

“Truman approached that meeting with a great deal of anxiety and insecurity. . . . He was very poorly informed about the complexities of the agreements that President Franklin Roosevelt had worked out during the war with Stalin,” said Melvyn Leffler, a University of Virginia historian and author of “A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War.”

Melvyn Leffler