Lecture: “Election 2020”

Welcome to a special lecture by David Goldfield, Professor of History at the University of North Carolina.

Election 2020

Pundits are calling next year’s presidential election the most important election of our time.  At stake is the future direction of American domestic and foreign policy.  Although that is true of our presidential elections, generally, it is especially significant in 2020 since Democrats and Republicans differ on many of the major issues such as trade, climate change, immigration, education, and health care.  Two key factors, independent of the candidates, will also play a role in electing our next President: our unique Electoral College system and the strategies of winning 270 electoral votes and, therefore, the presidency; and, how the nation’s changing demographics will impact the vote.

Speaker’s bio:

David Goldfield is the Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, a position he has held since 1982. A native of Memphis, he grew up in Brooklyn and attended the University of Maryland. He is the author or editor of sixteen books including two, Cotton Fields and Skyscrapers (1982) and Black, White, and Southern (1991), nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in history. His most recently published books are America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation (2011), Still Fighting the Civil War (2013), and The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good (2017). Goldfield is also the Editor of the Journal of Urban History, and serves as Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, as and as an expert witness in voting rights and capital punishment cases. He is Past President of the Southern Historical Association (2012-2013). Goldfield serves on the Advisory Board of the human rights organization, the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, and on the Board of the North Carolina Civil War and Reconstruction History Center. His hobbies include reading southern novels, watching baseball, and listening to the music of Gustav Mahler and Buddy Holly.

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