DIRECTOR’S WELCOME

It is a pleasure to welcome you to the website of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. LCHP will be commencing its seventh year in the fall of 2023. Over the course of its existence, the Center has advocated for the importance of history in public discourse—and insisted that knowledge of the past is a vital ingredient in informed debate and policy-making. Our podcast “Then & Now,” now entering its third season and reaching 35,000 downloads, brings deeply knowledgeable guests to help us understand the roots of contemporary issues and dilemmas.

The centerpiece of LCHP’s work is our research. LCHP both sponsors its own research initiatives and provides funding to researchers at UCLA to pursue scholarship that stands at the intersection of history and policy. We are a national leader in modeling a new form of applied scholarship that seeks to alter the way in which policy is understood and forged. As you can see from our website, our work has a strong local and regional focus, but also extends to sites of challenge around the world—and to time periods far from our own.

During this year, we will be hosting a series of lunch-time seminars in which speakers will exemplify the ways in which they use history to illuminate key contemporary policy questions. Through these seminars, we will refine the approaches and methods that allow for history to become an essential tool not only in explaining how we arrived at the present but how we can wisely chart a better future.

Please do join in our upcoming events and learn more about our work by contacting us at luskincenter@history.ucla.edu.

Warmly,

David N. Myers

Director, UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy

Distinguished Professor and Kahn Chair of Jewish History