At the end of the Cold War, political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously declared we had reached what he called “the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
More than three decades on, that confidence looks misplaced. Illiberal authoritarianism is ascendent, Western liberal democracy is on the backfoot, and China has emerged as an alternative model, pairing market dynamism with one-party rule. Is this the new “end of history,” or are we living through a longer, more contested transition whose outcome is not yet visible?
This Sunday, May 24 at 10:30 a.m., the Wende presents a panel discussion on these issues: The Future of History: Have We Reached the End of History Again?
The panel brings together four people equipped to think it through:
Miloš Jovanović, Assistant Professor of History at UCLA, who studies what becomes of cities and societies after empires collapse.
David N. Myers, Distinguished Professor of History at UCLA and founding director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy.
Natasha Piano, Assistant Professor of Political Theory at UCLA, who examines how democracies fail.
Terry Tang, Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Times and the first woman to hold that role in the paper’s history
Join us for one of the most urgent conversations of our moment.
RSVP here.
This program was made possible through the extraordinary generosity of Meyer and Renee Luskin. It is presented in collaboration with the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy and the LA History Collaborative.
