The End of the Cold War: Thirty Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall

November 2019 marks the thirty-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the end of the Cold War. The political figures of the 1980s – especially Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan – have taken on legendary, even mythic status.

Join us to hear three experts on the end of the Cold War challenge the myths of this era, and present their own scholarly conclusions:

Melvyn P. Leffler, Edward P. Stettinius Professor of History Emeritus, Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virgina, is a Bancroft prize-winning author of, among other books: A Preponderance of Power: National Security, The Truman Administration, and the Cold War; For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War; and, most recently, Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism.

Beth A. Fischer, Associate Professor and Woodsworth One Coordinator, author of The Reagan Reversal: Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War  and, in 2019, The Myth of Triumphalism: Rethinking President Reagan’s Cold War Legacy.

Michael C. Morgan, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of North Carolina, and the 2019-2020 Strom Visiting Professor in the University of Toronto’s Department of History, author of The Final Act: The Helsinki Accords and the Transformation of the Cold War.