Experts in the News | Miller Center

Nixon, Vietnam and the politics of polarization

Nixon was a master of the dark art of orchestrating political tensions, resentments and animosities for maximum political gain. The divisions he sowed in America have never entirely healed.

Ken Hughes

Even When It Comes To Clothes, Trump Is Barbaric

According to Barbara Perry, presidential studies director at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, Trump may seem to have a “devil-may-care” attitude about style, but is actually sending a message. “He’s saying, ‘I don’t give a damn how I look or how I act. That’s what the American people wanted, and it’s what Washington needs.’”

Barbara Perry

'The Harvest,' a new documentary about the failure of integration, by Doug Blackmon

In The Harvest, Blackmon and Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sam Pollard tell the story of the struggle to integrate public schools in the small town of Leland, Mississippi — as seen through the eyes of black and white children born at the height of civil rights struggle — and the transformation those students and all of America would undergo over the next 50 years.

Douglas Blackmon

The LBJ Tapes: Gulf of Tonkin

President Lyndon Johnson talked about the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, sending ground troops to Vietnam and Congressional hearings on the war. Participants included Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy. President Johnson also confered with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman and longtime adviser Richard Russell. Historian Ken Hughes from the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, who was a consultant for "The Vietnam War," is interviewed.

Ken Hughes

“This is treason”: Nixon, Vietnam and the “sordid story” of the Chennault Affair

The Republican nominee colluded with a foreign government to win the presidential election. The nominee was Richard Nixon, the foreign government was South Vietnam, and the election was 1968. This “sordid story,” as then-President Lyndon B. Johnson described it to Nixon (in a telephone conversation LBJ secretly tape-recorded), is one of the many narrative threads masterfully woven by directors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick into episode seven of "The Vietnam War," titled “The Veneer of Civilization (June 1968–May 1969).”

Ken Hughes

First draft 9.22

In this week’s roundtable discussion, Brian, Joanne, and Ed discuss the history behind 3 stories in the news: our lengthening work commutes, the massive data breach at Equifax, and the Census Bureau’s latest numbers on income inequality in America.

Brian Balogh