We may not wear bell bottoms and tie-dye t-shirts anymore, and let’s not talk about what happened to our hair. But even though almost half a century has passed since the 1960s, it’s a decade that continues to reverberate in our society, politics, culture, and institutions to this very day. In many ways, America today is a product of the Sixties. From civil rights to feminism to gay liberation to the environmental movement to the silent majority, what started back then has shaped and influenced our country ever since. Before the Sixties, Americans trusted their government and their leaders; since the Sixties, we question almost everything they do. To many, the presidency of Barack Obama symbolized the liberation movements of the Sixties. But it’s also important to ask how the Sixties produced the presidency of Donald Trump. To understand America today, we must understand the lessons from the 1960s.
Leonard Steinhorn, Professor, Author
Class 1098. Register at Live and Learn website. $15
Leonard Steinhorn is a professor of Public Communication and an affiliate professor of History. His expertise includes American politics, culture and media, strategic communication, the presidency, race relations, the 1960s, and recent American history. He is author of
The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy, and co-author of
By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race. He has published in books, journals, the
Washington Post,
Salon,
New York Times,
Politico,
The Hill,
International Herald Tribune,
Huffington Post, and
History News Network among others, and he is the founding editor of
PunditWire, where political speechwriters comment on the news. Steinhorn was twice named AU Faculty Member of the Year, and he also was named Honors Professor of the Year in 2010. Since 2012 he has served as a political analyst for CBS News, and before that he was a political analyst for FOX-5 News in Washington, DC. Before joining the AU faculty, he spent 15 years as a political consultant and speechwriter.
He holds degrees in BA History, Vassar College and MA History, Johns Hopkins University