Then & Now

Months after the national election and despite numerous judicial decisions to the contrary, many Americans still believe the election was stolen from Donald Trump. In recent weeks various state legislatures have used the claim of voter fraud to propose new bills to change voting procedures, launching a new chapter in the long battle over the franchise in the United States. In this episode of "Then & Now," we discuss the history of voter suppression and the current state of play with election law expert, Professor Franita Tolson, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs at the USC Gould School of Law and author of the forthcoming book In Congress We Trust: Enforcing Voting Rights From the Founding Fathers to the Jim Crow Era.

A recent LATimes investigation found that about 67% of the homeless population in Los Angeles County has either a mental illness or a substance abuse disorder. Yet, Dr. Jonathan Sherin wrote in a December op-ed, mental health policies are failing those who most need services. Dr. Sherin, the director of the LA County Department of Mental Health, joins Then & Now this week to discuss this challenge. He sits down with Dr. Kirsten Moore-Sheeley and Jessica Richards, two authors of LCHP’s forthcoming report on the history of homelessness, to discuss the lack of adequate services for people experiencing homelessness, his suggestions for engaging with those reluctant to receive mental health care, and his department's approach to th multifaceted stressors of our time, from the COVID-19 pandemic to racial inequity.

This episode is the second in a multi-part series examining the history and present state of homelessness in LA County. Find the first episode here.

In the wake of the pandemic and persistent underfunding, cultural and educational institutions in the United States today are increasingly confronted with an uncertain fate. How can they sustain growth, enfranchise new audiences, and increase diversity at a time when “the death of the humanities” looms on the horizon?

In this episode of Then & Now, Katherine E. Fleming, the president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, brings her rich experiences as historian, academic administrator, and now chief executive of a major philanthropic foundation to make sense of the problems faced by higher education and cultural institutions in the United States. Dr. Fleming talks about her academic trajectory, the paradoxical finances of American universities, and what her plans are for the Getty.

One of the most vexing social problems in U.S. society is our country’s healthcare system, which is wracked by rising costs, inequitable access, and manifold inefficiencies. Unlike Canada or a number of European countries, the United States has never adopted a single-payer system in which the government provides health insurance to all. Instead, it has favored a range of private options alongside supplemental government programs. As a result of its size and significance, the state of California has been a laboratory for government healthcare policy, with public officials and advocates testing the virtues of various private and public healthcare programs.

In a forthcoming report for the Luskin Center, Dr. Ben Zdencanovic, along with Sara Ohannessian, Lauren Heiberg, Emiko Levings, and Emilila Fergadiotti, examine the history of healthcare policy in California, with a particular focus on Medi-Cal, the state-sponsored insurance plan introduced in 1965. In this episode of “Then & Now,” we sit down to talk to Dr. Ben Zdencanovic about the findings of this team.

Dr. Ben Zdencanovic is a Postdoctoral Associate at the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. He is an historian of the United States in the world, domestic and international politics, and economic and social policy. He has a particular interest in the relationship between U.S. global power and the politics of redistribution and welfare state. His forthcoming book from Princeton University Press is titled Island of Enterprise: The End of the New Deal and the Rise of U.S. Global Power in a World of Welfare, 1940 – 1955.

Recent years have witnessed a stark rise across the globe in populist leaders whose policies are implicitly, or even explicitly, authoritarian. The policies of these leaders are sometimes at odds with their populist rhetoric in that they reward the elite few at the expense of the masses. Yet this trend is not new. As far back as ancient Egypt, we see authoritarian leaders collecting and retaining wealth and power in the hands of the elite. What are the parallels between the authoritarian governments of the past and the present? How can we use the past to cast a critical eye on our own social patterns and willingness to hand over power to the few?

In this week's episode of then & now, we sit down with Professor Kara Cooney to explore how and why authoritarian, populist leaders, from ancient Egypt to the present, gain and maintain power, and seek to understand why the many so often choose to give up power to the few.

Dr. Kara Cooney is a professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture at UCLA. In her recent book, The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World (National Geographic Press 2021), Kara turns to five ancient Egyptian pharaohs to understand why so many often give up power to the few and what it can mean for our future. Her current research in coffin reuse investigates the socioeconomic and political turmoil that plagued Late Bronze Age Egypt, ultimately affecting their funerary and burial practices. Results from this research will be published in a forthcoming volume, Recycling for Death (American University in Cairo Press).