Historians' Perspectives on the Rise of Donald J. Trump

The 2016 presidential race and the election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States revealed divisive social, cultural, and political issues convulsing the United States, many of which have deep historical roots.

The members of the Organization of American Historians, a professional society devoted to the teaching and study of U.S. history, can offer a valuable public service during these fractious times by providing historical perspectives on present events.

Listed below are the OAH Distinguished Lecturers from across the country who stand ready to speak about these important issues.

The OAH Distinguished Lectureship Program, with support and guidance from the OAH Executive Board, has framed this new initiative as a resource for all who wish to foster dialogue on college campuses and in communities nationwide. We hope it will advance critical thinking about both past and present.

OAH Lecture fees start at $1,000, payable to the OAH, plus travel expenses, reimbursed directly to the speaker. We are committed to working with student and nonprofit groups to minimize costs.

Contact us with any questions or to start the invitation process.

Featured Lecture

OAH Distinguished Lecturer Dan Feller, "Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump: Outsiders Alike?"

For additional insights on U.S. international relations, visit the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations experts directory.

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Gar Alperovitz
The Democracy Collaborative and University of Maryland College Park

The Election of 2016 as a Reflection of Systemic Crisis

Richard Aquila
Penn State University, Behrend College

TRUMP! The First Pop Culture President

Annette Atkins
Saint John's University and the College of Saint Benedict

We've Been Here Before: Dangerous Immigrants and Internal Security during World War I

Katherine Benton-Cohen
Georgetown University

The "Immigration Problem," 1920 and 2020

The History of U.S.-Mexico Border Enforcement

When Jews Fought against "Registries"—A Lesson for Today?

Women and the Rise of the Surveillance State in the Progressive Era

John E. Bodnar
Indiana University

Patriotic Optics and the War on Terror

Eileen Boris
University of California, Santa Barbara

Trump's America in Historical Perspective: The War against Women, the Fight against Unions, and the Assault against Mexicans, African Americans, and Muslims

Kevin Boyle
Northwestern University

My Home Town: Donald Trump in the Rust Belt

The Rages of Whiteness: Race, Class, and the Rise of Donald Trump

Sarah Bridger
California Polytechnic State University

Feminists, Social Constructivists, and Well-Meaning War Criminals: Redefining American Science in the 1970s

Jennifer Brier
University of Illinois at Chicago

History Moves and the Mobile Humanities, or How Might We Put the Public at the Center of Public History?

How to Have History during an Epidemic: Can History Make You Healthy?

Geraldo Cadava *
Northwestern University

Is Demography Destiny? The Racial Transformation of the United States since the 1960s

Mexican Immigration in Historical Perspective

The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity, from Nixon to Trump

The U.S.-Mexico Border in Historical Perspective

Albert Camarillo
Stanford University

California and the Future of U.S. Politics

Civil Rights and Race/Ethnic Relations in Trump's America

Immigrants and Immigration Policies

Julio Capó, Jr. *
Florida International University

Cuban Miami and the Rise of the New Right: The Uses of Transnational History

Thinking Historically, Reaching Broadly: Notes on Sharing Research outside the Academy

Undesirables: A Queer History of Latinx Challenges to U.S. Immigration Policy

Clayborne Carson
Stanford University

Where Do We Go from Here? King's Dream and the Trump Presidency

Joan E. Cashin
Ohio State University

Material Culture and Monuments in the Civil War Era

Veronica Castillo-Muñoz *
University of California Santa Barbara

Border Crossings: The Making of the Mexico-U.S. Borderlands

The Meaning of Being a Refugee in the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands

William H. Chafe
Duke University

Angry Whites and Donald Trump: The Inequality in America That We Have Not Addressed

How We Define Inequality

Parallels to 2016: Presidential Elections of 1877, 1968, and 2000

The Problems with the Electoral College: History, Racism, and the Idea of "One Person, One Vote"

David Anthony Chang
University of Minnesota

Teaching on Trump: Experiences Teaching a Course on the Far Right in America, Past and Present

Mary Marshall Clark
Columbia University

Breaking the Rule of Law and What It Cost Us: Guantanamo, an Oral History

Jelani Cobb
Columbia University

The Half-Life of Freedom: The Civil Rights Movement and the Return of Racial Populism

Dorothy Sue Cobble
Rutgers University-New Brunswick

Don't Blame the Workers: The Myth of Working-Class Conservatism

Economic Justice For All: American Feminism in Global Perspective

For the Many: America's Progressive Politics and the Global Women Who Made It

Charles L. Cohen
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Jews and Muslims in Christian America

Steven Conn
Miami University of Ohio

The Role of "Big Government" in American Life, or, What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

The Roots of the Rural-Urban Divide

Thinking About Thoreau in a Time of Resistance

Blanche Wiesen Cook
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York

Refugees and Rescue during World War II and Today

Women's Rights, Civil Rights, and Human Rights from Eleanor Roosevelt to the Women's Marchers

Stephanie Coontz
The Evergreen State College and Council on Contemporary Families

The Way Things Used To Be? The Politics of Nostalgia in Contemporary America

Seth Cotlar
Willamette University

Placing Donald Trump in the History of American Conservatism

Edward Countryman
Southern Methodist University

"Belonging to America" after the Revolution

The Central Themes of an Ambiguous Revolution

Jefferson Cowie
Vanderbilt University

Are We in a New Age? The Techno-Global Meets the Ethno-Fundamental

Defining White Freedom in America, from Andrew Jackson to Donald Trump

The Deep History of Backlash America

The Social History of the Trump Vote, 1968–2016

Karen L. Cox
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

After Charlottesville: How the Confederate Monument Debate Became a Game Changer for Historians

Jane E. Dailey
University of Chicago

From Civil Rights to Human Rights in Twentieth-Century America

Remembering Our KKK Past

The Theology of White Supremacy

William Mahone: The Confederate General Who Was Erased

Rebecca L. Davis
University of Delaware

Brainwashing the King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Nation of Islam

Faith, Sex, Congress, and Celebrity: How Clare Boothe Luce Shaped American Culture

I'm Free to Be Who I Want: How Americans Found Their Truth in an Age of Phonies

Marriage, Sex, and American History

Rachel Devlin
Rutgers University-New Brunswick

Performing "Civic Decency": The Black Women and Girls who Desegregated American Schools

Bruce J. Dierenfield
Canisius College and Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site

Heroes and Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement

Myths of the Civil Rights Movement

A Look at Black Strategies against White Supremacy, Then and Now

Separate and Unequal: Racial Oppression in America

The Black Lives Matter Movement

The Forward Together / Moral Monday Movement

Hasia Diner
New York University

How the Irish Taught the Jews to Become American

Antisemitism: Its American Story

Making America Great: Immigrants and the Making of the Nation

David C. Engerman
Yale University

The United States and Russia, 1917–2017: From Lenin to Trump

Nan Enstad
University of Wisconsin-Madison

From Michelle Obama to Ivanka Trump: The History of Female Populism and the Future of Feminism

The Cult of the Entrepreneur and the Rise of Donald Trump: How Faith in Capitalist Innovation Restructured American Democracy

Todd Estes
Oakland University

Populism, Pseudo-Populism, and the Enduring Appeal of Both Forces in U.S. Political Culture over Time

The 2016 Presidential Election and the Transformation of the Blue State—Red State Electoral Map: Retrospect and Prospect

John Fea
Messiah College

Historical Thinking in the Age of Trump

Understanding American Evangelicalism in the Age of Trump

Daniel Feller
University of Tennessee

Andrew Jackson in the Age of Trump

Mark Fiege
Montana State University

A Country without Illusions: Wallace Stegner in His Time and Ours

The Significance of the Public Lands in American Life

Paul Finkelman
Gratz College

A Nation of Immigrants and a History of Anti-Immigrant Movement

Antisemitism and the Development of American Religious Freedom

Balancing Liberty and Security in our Democracy

Free Speech: The Key to Liberty

Freedom of Thought in America

How the Electoral College Protected Slavery

Nationalism, Nativism, and Fear in American History

Religious Persecution in American History: Quakers, Baptists, Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses

François Furstenberg
Johns Hopkins University

The Electoral College in Historical Perspective: Antidemocratic Legacies of the American Constitution

Trump and the Republican Party: Continuities and Ruptures

Kevin Gaines
University of Virginia

American Populism: Its Rise, Fall, and Legacy

Teaching Race in Modern American History

The Post-World War II Black Freedom Struggle

Mario T. García
University of California Santa Barbara

The Sanctuary Movement, Past and Present, and the Trump Threat to Latino Immigrants

Malick W. Ghachem
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Maine

The University, the Constitution, and the Ends of Academic Excellence

Lawrence B. Glickman
Cornell University

Donald Trump and the Anti-New Deal Tradition

Donald Trump and Populist Conservatism

Donald Trump and Salesmanship in American Consumer History

David Goldfield
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

American Politics after Covid-19 and Trump: A Historical Perspective

Linda Gordon
New York University

45 Years of Arguing about Reproduction Control

Dorothea Lange: The Conflicts of an Ambitious Woman

Impounded: Dorothea Lange's Hidden Photographs of the Japanese Internment in World War II

The Ku Klux Klan and the American Political Tradition

The Much Misunderstood Women's Liberation Movement

Visual Democracy: How Dorothea Lange Used Photography to Promote Equality

Eliga H. Gould
University of New Hampshire

The American Revolution and the Making of Religious Liberty

The Coup We Escaped: George Washington and the Newburgh Conspiracy of 1783

To Keep and Bear Arms: What the Second Amendment Did—and Did Not—Mean in 1791

Cheryl Greenberg
Trinity College and University of Helsinki

Civil Rights vs. Civil Liberties: The Case of Hate Speech

Trigger Warnings, Racist Symbols, and Free Speech: American Campuses Today

The Civil Rights Movement as Usable Past

Why "Black Lives Matter" Should Matter to Whites

Daniel Greene
Newberry Library and Northwestern University

Desperate Times, Limited Measures: America and the Refugee Crisis of the 1930s

Julie Greene
University of Maryland, College Park

Understanding the Workers of Trumpland: How History Shaped the Politics of 2016

When Benjamin Franklin Worried about the Swarthy Germans: How Anxiety about Immigrants Shaped the United States

Who Is an American? Belonging and Exclusion in American History (and How It Shapes the Present)

Ariela J. Gross
University of Southern California

Race, Citizenship, and the U.S. Constitution

Race, Gender, and the U.S. Constitution

The Past and Future of Civil Rights

White Nationalism in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

Thomas A. Guglielmo
George Washington University

White Nationalism: A History

Immigration and Race: A History

Matthew Pratt Guterl
Brown University

Fakes and Frauds in Modern America

Steven Hahn
New York University

Reconstruction and the American Political Tradition

The Illiberal Tradition in America

The United States from Inside Out and Southside North

Kimberly A. Hamlin *
Miami University

#MeToo, Carry Nation, and Why It’s Time to Revisit the History of the Temperance Movement

Are Women People? A History of the Equal Rights Amendment

Helen Hamilton Gardener’s Audacious Pursuit of Equality and the Vote

The 19th Amendment: The Fourth Reconstruction Amendment?

Hendrik Hartog
Princeton University

Conservative Constitutionalism and the Strategic Uses of Rights

Paul Harvey
University of Colorado Colorado Springs

1876 and 2016: Civil Rights and Voter Suppression during the 1st and 2nd Redemption

Religious Conservatism and Liberalism in the Age of Trump

White Nationalism in Historical Perspective

Joan Hoff
Montana State University, Bozeman

Civil Rights and Campus Sexual Assault

What War Has Done to the Presidency

Peter Charles Hoffer
University of Georgia

What's Wrong with History

Michael K. Honey
University of Washington Tacoma

Stealing the Dream: Martin Luther King's Unfinished Agenda and the Trump Era

Frederick E. Hoxie
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Indian Affairs in the Twenty-First Century

Madeline Y. Hsu
University of Texas at Austin

Families across Borders: Illegality and the Ties that Bind

Immigration and Deportation Policy

Michael Innis-Jiménez
University of Alabama

Engaged Learning in the Anti-Immigrant South: Building Bridges in a Hostile Environment

Us vs. Them, Then and Now: Understanding Anti-Mexican Rhetoric in Times of Economic Crisis

Karl Jacoby
Columbia University

Drawing the Line: Lessons from Thinking Historically about the U.S.-Mexico Border

John W. Jeffries
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

The Surprising Candidacies of Donald Trump and Wendell Willkie, and the Changes in American Politics since 1940

Emily Suzanne Johnson *
Ball State University

“This Is Our Message”: How Women’s Leadership Built the New Christian Right

Robert Douglas Johnston *
University of Illinois at Chicago

Can We Create a Dialogue Between Left-Wing and Right-Wing Interpretations of American History?

Democratic Promise: Why We Can Still Find Hope in American Populist Traditions

William P. Jones
University of Minnesota

Labor Rights in the Age of Trump

Race and Class in the Age of Trump

Walter D. Kamphoefner
Texas A&M University

American Immigration, Past and Present: Myths and Reality

Stephen Kantrowitz
University of Wisconsin-Madison

When White Supremacy Won: Pitchfork Ben Tillman and the Battle against Equality

Peter Karsten
University of Pittsburgh

The Four "Cousins-in-Law" and How They Are Related: Substantive Due Process and State-Based Prohibition; Slavery in the Federal Territory; Mormon Statehood; and Public School Prayer and Bible Reading

Revisiting the Critiques of Justices who Upheld the Fugitive Slave Acts

The Cuban Missile Crisis, a Very Close Call

The Myriad of Consequences of U.S. Wars

Michael Kazin
Georgetown University

What Kind of Populist Is Donald Trump?

Daniel J. Kevles
Yale University

Contested Earth: The Science and Politics of Climate and Development

Alan M. Kraut
American University

Closing the Gates, Building a Wall: What the History of Immigration Restriction against Jews Can Teach Us about American Nativism

Nativism before Donald Trump: Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in the Early Twentieth Century

Kevin M. Kruse
Princeton University

Jim Crow: Race, Rights, and Reaction in Twentieth-Century America

Peter J. Kuznick
American University

“Multipolarity and Its Discontents: How the End of the American Empire Is Changing the World”

Erika Lee
University of Minnesota

Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America

Immigrants Out: A History of American Xenophobia

James Livingston
Rutgers University-New Brunswick

F%#* Work, A Manifesto: Why Full Employment Is a Bad Idea, or What Is to Be Done When Work Disappears

Elizabeth Lunbeck
Harvard University

Narcissism in the Age of Trump

Nancy MacLean
Duke University

The Origins of Today’s Koch-Funded Radical Right and the Crisis of Our Democracy

James H. Madison
Indiana University

The Ku Klux Klan, Yesterday and Today

Elaine Tyler May
University of Minnesota

Fortress America: Fear and its Consequences since the Cold War

Melani McAlister
George Washington University

The Politics of Persecution

Micki McElya
University of Connecticut

Finding Common Ground in Arlington National Cemetery

New Right Beauty: Race, Gender, and American Conservatism’s Aesthetic Politics since 1945

Danielle L. McGuire
Independent Scholar

Murder in the Motor City: The 1967 Detroit Riot and American Injustice

Ajay K. Mehrotra
American Bar Foundation and Northwestern University School of Law and History Department

Populism in America

The Legacy of Progressivism in the Trump Era

The Rise and Fall of Progressive Taxation in the United States

U.S. Fiscal Policy in Comparative and Historical Perspective

Natalia Molina
University of California, San Diego and California Humanities

Why pandemics activate xenophobia

Douglas Monroy
Colorado College

Intimate Strangers: The United States and Mexico

Khalil Gibran Muhammad
Harvard University and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study

In Punishment We Trust: The Logic and Legacy of American Punitiveness

The Power Gap: Antiracism as the New Diversity and Inclusion in Post-Obama America

The Unbearable Likeness of Ferguson: An Origin Story of Now

Kevin Mumford
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Hate Nation: Fighting Anti-Semitism, Racism, and Homophobia Since the 1970s

Monica Muñoz Martinez
Brown University

Policing Race on the U.S.–Mexico Border

Premilla Nadasen
Barnard College, Columbia University

Grass-Roots Organizing and Progressive Social Change: Lessons from History

Where Do We Go from Here? Poverty, the Welfare State, and Economic Justice

Women and Feminism in the Trump Era

Mae M. Ngai
Columbia University

A Nation of Immigrants: A Short History of an Idea

Illegal Immigration: Origins and Consequences

Christopher McKnight Nichols
Oregon State University and Oregon State University Center for the Humanities

"Everyone was in the Loop": Impeachment in Historical Perspective

America First? Isolationism and U.S. Global Engagement in Historical Perspective

Michelle Nickerson
Loyola University, Chicago

Our Problem with "Truthiness": The Centuries-long History of Fake News in the United States

The History of Our Populist Presidency: Traditions of Anti-Elitism in American Politics

Alice O'Connor
University of California, Santa Barbara

Circling the Wagons: Conservative Movement Politics and the Rise of Donald Trump

Divided Democracy: The Politics of Inequality in the 2016 Election

Myths and Realities of the "White Working-Class Voter"

Margaret O'Mara
University of Washington

Modern Presidential Elections That Made History

Peter S. Onuf
Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, Monticello and University of Virginia

Thomas Jefferson and White Nationalism

Jason M. Opal
McGill University

Did the Founders Want the United States to Follow International Law?

How Donald Trump Is Like Andrew Jackson

Vigilante Nation: The Long History of "Populist" Violence against People of Color

Annelise Orleck
Dartmouth College

Donald Trump and the History of Right-Wing Populism in the United States

The End of Medicare and Social Security As We Know Them

Ted Ownby
University of Mississippi

Virtue, Corruption, and Household Politics in the Election of 2016

Christopher Phillips
The University of Cincinnati

Legacy of Dissent: The Civil War Roots of Populist White Nationalism in Middle America

Claire Bond Potter
The New School

Clickbait Nation: How iCampaigns Changed American Politics

Tyler Priest
University of Iowa

Frackenstein's Monster: The Recent History of American "Energy Dominance"

Sherie M. Randolph
Georgia Institute of Technology

Black Feminist Political Futures

Race, Gender, and Incarceration

Race, Gender, and Violence: The New American Politics?

Jennifer Eden Ratner-Rosenhagen
University of Wisconsin–Madison

Intellectual Roots of Trump's Anti-Intellectualism

Leslie J. Reagan
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

When Abortion Was a Crime: The American Past, and Present?

Leah Wright Rigueur
Harvard University

"Black Women Will Rally!" Black Women, Intersectional Politics, and the 2016 Presidential Election

How the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter Shaped the 2016 Presidential Election

Jarod Roll
University of Mississippi

A Deep History of White Working-Class Conservatism: The Strange Career of America's Anti-Union Miners

E. Anthony Rotundo
Phillips Academy Andover

Before Trump: White Men, Masculinity, and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism, 1964–2016

Scott A. Sandage
Carnegie Mellon University

LOSER! How Trump's Favorite Insult Became Our Hugest Fear

A. K. Sandoval-Strausz
Penn State University

Latino Immigrants and the Transformation of American Cities, 1950–2010

Alex M. Saragoza
University of California, Berkeley

Bipartisanship and the Mexican Immigration Issue, from Reagan to Trump

Recent Latino Historical Scholarship: A Critical Perspective

The Mexico-U.S. Interface and Mexicans in the United States

Ellen Schrecker
Yeshiva University

Donald Trump and the New McCarthyism

Donna C. Schuele
California State University, Los Angeles and UCLA Center for the Study of Women

Not Your Father's Liberty: Reproductive Freedom and the Fourteenth Amendment

The Law of War: Presidential Power on the International Stage

The Supreme Court in the Balance: The Role of the Swing Justice

Donald Schwartz
California State University, Long Beach

Dogs and Jews Not Allowed: Antisemitism in U.S. History

Immigration and Anti-Immigration in U.S. History

Thomas Alan Schwartz
Vanderbilt University

The Rise of Trump and American Foreign Policy

Manisha Sinha
University of Connecticut

America's Rotten Borough Electoral College

Reliving the Fall of Reconstruction in the Age of Trump

The United States of Trumpistan?

Gregory D. Smithers *
Virginia Commonwealth University and British Academy

Anti-Indian Prejudices in the Age of Trump

Sarah B. Snyder *
American University

“From Selma to Moscow: How U.S. Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy”

“Continuity and Change in U.S. Human Rights Policy”

Paul Spickard
University of California, Santa Barbara

Immigrants and the Undocumented: What's Real, What's Not, and What We Can Hope for in the Trump Years

Marjorie J. Spruill
University of South Carolina

Divided We Stand: The Battle over Women’s Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics

Randall Stephens
University of Oslo

Have We Been Here Before? Trumpism and the Question of Historical Precedent

The Strange Career of Trump-Supporting Evangelicals

Landon R. Storrs
University of Iowa

Antifeminism and Cold War Politics

Hidden Convictions: The Second Red Scare and the End of Reform

McCarthyism in Historical Perspective

Jeremi Suri
University of Texas at Austin

Populism against Democracy

Right-Wing Politics in America and across the Globe

The New McCarthyism

The Rise and Fall of the American Presidency

Matthew Avery Sutton
Washington State University

Trump and Evangelical America: The Rise (and Fall?) of the Religious Right

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Princeton University

From #BlackLivesMatter to the White-Power Presidency: Race and Class in the Trump Era

Heather Ann Thompson
University of Michigan

Civil Rights in the Age of Trump

Criminal Justice Reform in the Age of Trump

Policing in the Age of Trump

Phil Tiemeyer
Kansas State University

Religious Right, Alt-Right, and Neoliberal "Rights": What the Recent Past Tells Us about the State of LGBTQ Rights in the Trump Presidency

Robert Brent Toplin
University of North Carolina at Wilmington and University of Virginia

"The Economy, Stupid": How the Clash of Economic Arguments in Presidential Elections Since 1980 Has Affected the Well-Being of America's Working People

Fake News from Thomas Jefferson's Time to 2016