March 5, 2026, Yale University
David Blight in conversation with Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation.
As president of the Organization of American Historians last year, I promised I would reach out to the Heritage Foundation and its president, Kevin Roberts, to try to engage a debate about all the attacks Heritage and the Trump White House had launched against historians, the practice of history, and cultural institutions more generally. For this podcast, which runs one hour and ten minutes, we agreed to be open, civil, and decent while we expected to disagree on almost everything. And we did both. We discussed a very wide range of issues, some of which I might have pushed him even harder on, but on many I think he and his institution's approach are revealed or exposed here. I welcome anyone's feedback. The goal here is not to build a bridge to the Heritage Foundation and its approaches and ideology, but to see if it is possible to communicate across one of the great divides in our country and create honest debate.
Listen to conversation: Blight Roberts