With the United States in the midst of an unpredictable campaign season, UConn is welcoming renowned presidential historian Michael Beschloss to campus on Wednesday, April 13 as this year’s speaker in the Edmund Fusco Contemporary Issues Forum.
He will speak on “Presidential Courage and Great Presidents: Past, Present, and Future.” There will be an opportunity to ask questions, including questions about the current election, after his talk.
President Susan Herbst announced the news in an email to the University community in February.
“In a year when American voters will choose our next president, Michael Beschloss’ visit to UConn is both timely and illustrative of the purpose of the Fusco lecture series,” Herbst wrote. “Anyone who hopes to understand the forces shaping this particularly fascinating election year will want to attend this event.”
More information about the lecture, which will be held at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts and is free and open to the public, can be found here.
The New York Times Book Review calls Michael Beschloss “easily the most widely recognized presidential historian in the United States,” and, with more than 135,000 followers, Beschloss also has the largest Twitter following (@BeschlossDC) of any historian on earth; his popular site appears on TIME magazine’s list of the world’s top Twitter feeds.
Beschloss, who writes a column for the New York Times, also serves as the NBC News presidential historian – the first time any major TV network has created such a position. In 2005, he won an Emmy Award for his role in creating the Discovery Channel series Decisions that Shook the World, of which he was the host.
For the New York Times, Beschloss writes a monthly business history column on Sundays and a weekly sports history column on Saturdays – the first time the Times has ever published a regular columnist on either of those subjects.
Beschloss was born in Chicago in 1955. An alumnus of Phillips Academy (Andover) and Williams College, he also earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School, where he studied leadership and business history. He has served as an historian at the Smithsonian Institution, a resident scholar at Oxford University, and a senior fellow of the Annenberg Foundation.
The Edmund Fusco Contemporary Issues forum is sponsored by the Fusco family of New Haven, who created the forum at UConn through a philanthropic gift to celebrate their family’s 90th year in business, as well as the 90th birthday of Edmund Fusco. Through these forums, members of the UConn community are given the opportunity to challenge and expand their views on topics of profound and lasting influence.
The forum, which was launched in 2012, has previously welcomed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as speakers.
