This is Democracy – Episode 324: Universities Today

Jeremi and Zachary sit down with historian and former U.S. State Department official Michael Kimmage to take stock of where things stand in the fourth year of the war in Ukraine. Michael Kimmage is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America, and the director of the Kennan Institute. From 2014 to 2017, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. His latest book is Collisions: The War in Ukraine and the Origins of the New Global Instability. Edited by Uriel Murillo.

Jeremi and Zachary speak with historian Vaneesa Cook about her book “Empire and Liberty,” using the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building to examine how monuments have reflected debates over U.S. liberty, empire, immigration, protest, and public memory from the late 19th century through the Cold War. They discuss how each landmark’s meaning has shifted over time through politics, popular culture, and commemoration as the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

In today's episode, Jeremi and Zachary discuss how U.S. universities are changing, delving into shifts in campus political culture, administrative growth around DEI, viewpoint diversity and ideological siloing. They also discuss the financial and policy pressures such as federal research funding cuts, visa changes for international students, and endowment taxes, and what exactly these changes mean for teaching, civics education, and the role of universities in public life.

This week, Jeremi and Zachary speak with Dr. Daniel Hummel to address the claim of the US as a "Christian Nation" by many of its citizens, and how this notion relates to our democracy. Dr. Daniel Hummel is the director of the Lumen Center in Madison, WI, and a research fellow in the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research and writing are on American evangelicals, theology, politics, and culture. His most recent book is: The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation. He has also written about similar topics for Christianity Today, New Lines Magazine, and the Washington Post.

This week, Jeremi and Zachary interview Brown University historian Dr. Omer Bartov about his book, Israel: What Went Wrong?, written after October 7 amid his efforts to understand Israeli society, media narratives, and the war in Gaza informed by his visits to Israel in 2024. Dr. Omer Bartov is the Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. He is the author of many important books, including: Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz; Tales from the Borderlands: Making and Unmaking the Galician Past; and most recently, Israel: What Went Wrong?.

This week, Zachary and Jeremi speak with UT Austin professor Lorinc Redei about Hungary’s recent election, in which longtime prime minister Viktor Orbán was defeated by opposition leader Péter Magyar, and what may come next. Lorinc Redei is the assistant dean for undergraduate education and an associate professor of instruction at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is from Hungary and an expert on the politics of that country, policy-making in Europe, democratic backsliding, and international relations.

This week, Jeremi and Zachary host historian Mark Peterson to discuss his book, The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History, and to rethink the Constitution as a long-evolving relationship among people, government institutions, land, and written instruments rather than a single 1787 text. Mark Peterson is the Edmund S. Morgan Professor of History at Yale University.  He is the author of three major books: The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England; The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865; and, most recently, The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History.

This week, Zachary and Jeremi interview Atlantic writer and Johns Hopkins professor emeritus Eliot Cohen about his article “One War Two Mistakes” and how to think about the current U.S. war with Iran. Eliot Cohen is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He is a professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University, author of the forthcoming book The Strategist: How to Think About War and Politics, and co-host of the Shield of the Republic podcast. Cohen is also the author of The Hollow Crown, Supreme Command, Conquered Into Liberty, The Big Stick, and other works on military history and national-security policy. He created the strategic-studies program at Johns Hopkins SAIS and served as the school’s ninth dean. He has also served as the counselor of the Department of State and in other positions in the U.S. Department of Defense and the intelligence community.

This week, Zachary and Jeremi have a conversation with Dr. Michael Dennis about the current war with Iran and the United States and Israel with a focus on the historical perspective. Michael Dennis is an Associate Professor of Practice at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Dr. Dennis served as Chief of Intelligence Operations and Chief of Strategic Futures at Army Futures Command and was a member of the Intelligence Community, serving at the National Ground Intelligence Center as a Senior Intelligence Analyst. He was appointed an Exceptional Analyst Research Fellow at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and taught at the National Intelligence University’s Center for Strategic Intelligence and Research. 

Jeremi and Zachary speak with historian Heather Ann Thompson about her book "Fear and Fury," using the 1984 Bernie Goetz subway case to explore how Reagan-era, rising inequality, and a newly powerful conservative media reshaped public attitudes about crime, race, and self-defense. They connect the episode to figures like Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump, and Rudy Giuliani, and to the often-overlooked lives of the four teenagers at the center of the story. Dr. Heather Ann Thompson is a historian at the University of Michigan, and is the Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (Pantheon Books, 2016). Her latest book is Fear and Fury: The Reagan 80s, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage (Pantheon, 2026).