Thomas Schwartz

John C. Kornblum, distinguished ambassador in residence and writer in residence for the Max Kade Center for European & German Studies, died Dec. 21, 2023, in Nashville. He was 80. Read More

Matthew Ramsey, professor of history and medicine, health and society, emeritus, who taught at Vanderbilt for more than three decades and was the founding director of the Center for Medicine, Health and Society, died Sept. 2. Read More

Paul K. Conkin, Distinguished Professor of History, Emeritus, former chair of the Department of History and author of more than 20 books on a wide range of American intellectual history, died July 23 in Nashville. Read More

Chancellor Daniel Diermeier and the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy will host a virtual panel Aug. 26 on the crisis in Afghanistan—a timely and exclusive discussion featuring Vanderbilt faculty historians and foreign policy experts and retired Lt. Gen. Scott A. Howell, former commander of U.S. Joint Special Operations Command.  Read More

Vanderbilt University historian Thomas Schwartz has written a biography of famed diplomat Henry Kissinger that offers lessons for today’s political leaders. Read More

Ambassadors Susan Rice and John Bolton agreed during the Vanderbilt Chancellor’s Lecture Wednesday evening that significant improvements are needed in the current decision-making process on national security issues, but the two sharply differed in their opinions on the recent presidential impeachment process. Read More

The Faculty Senate will host a community conversation for faculty and staff from noon to 1 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 1, to discuss themes from the Chancellor’s Lecture Series event with presidential historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Jon Meacham taking place the prior evening. Read More

Imagine Europe with Communist governments in Germany, France and Italy, all satellites of the Soviet Union. If the D-Day invasion, which happened 75 years ago June 6, had failed, then it is conceivable that Stalin’s Soviet Union would have liberated all of Europe from Hitler and ended up controlling… Read More

Although legal and copyright issues continue to hinder access, the Vanderbilt Television News Archive—a repository of television news recordings from the past 50 years—is a national archival treasure. Read More

Seven members of the German Bundestag, Germany’s national parliament, visited a Vanderbilt class Oct. 31 to discuss a number of contemporary political issues with undergraduate students. Read More

Professor of History Thomas Alan Schwartz discusses the origins of the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, called the “preeminent video resource for scholars of TV news,” in this Conversation piece. The archive celebrates 50 years of continuous operation this August. Read More

"The American Presidency" exhibition, drawing on rare memorabilia and biographies in the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries' Special Collections, will open with a talk by presidential historian Thomas Alan Schwartz Feb. 20. Read More

[vustarinfo] A number of Vanderbilt University experts will be available to media in the days leading up to and after the State of the Union speech Jan. 30 to discuss a variety of topics that could be addressed during President Trump’s address next Tuesday. Will Trump “talk tough” about immigration?… Read More

A discussion and Q&A on the role of the press during the Vietnam War will follow a one-hour screening of "The Vietnam War," a film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, at the John Seigenthaler Center Sept. 7. Read More

President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated Jan. 20. Several Vanderbilt professors have opinions about the inauguration and transition. Read More

Whatever your political leanings, the acidic divisiveness between—and among—parties in this election cycle has left little for anyone to love. Luckily, I got a break from the daily shouting matches about finger lengths, email servers and Bernie Bros by digging into some of the fascinating, reasoned research around presidential politics being produced by members of Vanderbilt’s esteemed political science department for this issue’s cover story. Read More

Temple Baker, BA’15, is not your typical Hollywood success story. He wasn’t a child star, shuffled from audition to audition by pushy parents, nor did he have much interest in becoming an actor during college. In fact, his only real stage experience was a fourth-grade production of Romeo and Juliet, in… Read More

Oscar-nominated director Richard Linklater cast Baker in his latest film, Everybody Wants Some!!—a “spiritual sequel” to his 1993 cult classic Dazed and Confused—about a college baseball team in Texas in the ’80s. Read More

The 2015 Osher Lifelong Learning spring term at Vanderbilt, geared for those 50 and older, includes classes on religious beliefs and extraterrestrials, modern art, financial strategies, and diplomat Henry Kissinger. Read More

Two lucky classes--on the Vietnam War and political biography--will get instruction from Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Maraniss in the spring. Read More