The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law is excited to announce that Julian E. Zelizer is joining as its inaugural Scholar in Residence. Zelizer is a New York Times best-selling author and the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. In addition to the 28 books he has written or edited, Zelizer is a columnist at Foreign Policy, a regular guest on NPR’s Here and Now, and author of The Long View, a Substack newsletter.
At the Brennan Center, Zelizer will work on Rendezvous with Democracy: America, 1945–1974, to be published by HarperCollins. The book will examine American conceptions of democracy and their transformation between the end of World War II and the downfall of President Nixon. Zelizer is looking at grassroots movements and other factors that led to an expanded understanding of rights, citizenship, and political accountability.
In February, Zelizer’s latest book, Rumble on the Promenade: The Clash of Justice and Power at the 1964 Democratic Convention, will be published by W.W. Norton. The work focuses on the historic clash that took place during Freedom Summer between the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and President Lyndon Johnson at the 1964 Democratic Convention over the meaning of citizenship and American Democracy.
Zelizer appeared on the Brennan Center’s podcast, The Briefing with Michael Waldman, in May to discuss the hyper-partisanship in today’s politics and recent attacks on voting rights. In 2020, the Brennan Center hosted Zelizer for a public conversation about his book Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, The Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party (Penguin, 2020).
“We are so grateful to have Julian Zelizer at the Brennan Center to help us understand the current state of American democracy and how we got here. He is one of the country’s leading historians and public intellectuals, with an abiding passion for our democracy,” said Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center. “With his deep knowledge of democratic institutions and their evolution, Zelizer will enrich the Center’s thinking on the problems in government and their solutions.”
More about Julian Zelizer
Julian E. Zelizer is the inaugural scholar in residence in the Brennan Center’s Fellows Program, where he is working on a new book for Harper Collins, Rendezvous with Democracy: America, 1945–1974. A leading historian of American politics, Zelizer’s scholarship examines the evolution of democracy, political institutions, and public leadership in the United States. His forthcoming book explores how Americans sought to redefine democracy in the decades following World War II, as the nation grappled with civil rights, political reform, and the legacy of defeating fascism abroad.
Zelizer is on sabbatical from Princeton University, where he serves as the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs. He is the award-winning writer and editor of 28 books, including The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society, the winner of the D.B. Hardeman Prize for the best book on Congress, and Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party. Zelizer is also a columnist for Foreign Policy and the author of the Substack newsletter The Long View.
