Each spring, the UCF History Department hosts the Pauley Lecture Series on Global Affairs, an annual event that invites engaging speakers to share their perspectives with students. This year’s lecture is no exception, tackling a compelling — and complicated — topic: whether Richard Nixon was the last liberal Republican president. The event will take place March 28 at 5:30 p.m. EST on Zoom and in-person at UCF’s Morgridge International Reading Center.
The UCF Department of History will also collaborate with Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society to host a Brown Bag Lunch with speaker John Roy Price. On March 28 at noon, students will have the chance to talk with and ask questions of Price in a casual setting. Attendees should pack a lunch — drinks will be provided.
Click here to register to attend the Pauley Lecture Series in person or online.
More info about the lecture:
“Nixon was a ‘man of government’ who believed the federal government had a crucial role to play to assure the American family’s sense of security,” says John Roy Price, this year’s featured speaker. “It’s time to take a fresh look at how the Republican party can once again moor itself to policy solutions to peoples’ needs.”
During the first Nixon administration, Price was special assistant to the president of the United States and executive secretary of the Council for Urban Affairs and the Council for Rural Affairs. Price’s lecture, titled “Richard Nixon Was the Last Liberal Republican President. Counterintuitive? Maybe. Accurate? Yes,” will take a fresh look at Nixon’s social policies and the ongoing relevance of the arguments for and against them.
The lecture, based on Price’s memoir The Last Liberal Republican, will explore key moments in Nixon’s presidency that have since been overshadowed by Watergate and other scandals of the administration. As a member of the administration, Price helped develop domestic policies on welfare, hunger and health that have led him to place Nixon “firmly in the liberal Republican tradition.”
Among the policies to be explored in the lecture are the Family Assistance Plan — Nixon’s guaranteed income proposal — and the administration’s sweeping universal health insurance proposals, which included coverage of pre-existing conditions 40 years before the Affordable Care Act.
“Richard Nixon was the eager and willing continuation, even dramatic expansion, of the moderate or liberal trajectory of the Republican Party,” says Price. “Nixon’s social policies and the arguments for and against them at the time have resonance — even repetition — today.”