Beginning in January, 2010, Geoff Shepard, along with Frank Gannon and support staff from the Richard Nixon Foundation, began arranging and producing a series of Nixon Legacy Forums.
The forums focus on policy initiatives of the Nixon Administration and feature discussions among administration members who worked on them—and helped create the documents and other materials now available to scholars and researchers at the Richard Nixon Library.
These forums are best seen as an overview of particular policy initiatives, which can then be followed up by more detailed research by those interested in learning more about a particular topic.
They are co-sponsored by the National Archives and the Richard Nixon Foundation. Many also have been broadcast on C-Span’s American History channel.
The forums, over thirty to date, have been arranged into three groupings. (All personnel titles are during the Nixon administration, unless otherwise noted.)
I. Foreign Affairs: Launching the Golden Age of Diplomacy
- Revitalizing the National Security Council (5/12/2014)
- Nixon as Cold War Strategist (5/27/2011)
- The Opening to China (11/12/2014)
- Kissinger on Nixon’s Opening to China (3/7/2012)
- The Week that Changed the World (10/13/2010)
- Détente with the Soviet Union (2/23/2015)
- Vietnam and the Paris Peace Accords (12/5/2014)
- Vietnam POWs: Home with Honor (5/25/2013)
- The Geopolitics of the Middle East (4/23/2012)
II. Domestic Affairs: Pursuit of a Just Society
- The New Federalism (8/8/2011)
- The Domestic Council (1/9/10)
- The Peaceful Desegregation of Southern Schools (2/1/2012)
- Nixon and the Origins of Welfare Reform (6/2/10)
- Nixon and the Rise of Environmentalism (4/22/10)
- Ending the Draft: The Creation of an All-Volunteer Force (1/19/2012)
- Nixon’s Drug Abuse Initiatives (Part I)(5/4/2018)
- Nixon’s Drug Abuse Initiatives (Part II) (3/24/2007)
- Native American Rights – Part I (5/23/2012)
- Native American Rights – Part II (11/17/2012)
- Home Rule for the District of Columbia (5/16/2014)
- Creating Opportunities for Latino Americans (10/9/2010)
- Labor and Employment Policy in the Nixon Administration (12/5/2011)
- Confronting America’s First Energy Crisis (10/19/2011)
- Combating Organized Crime in the Nixon Era (6/13/2011)
- Five Watergate Conspiracies (5/22/10)
- Nixon’s Legacy (7/21/2010)
- Richard Nixon, The Final Comeback (2/10/2017)
III. Structural Initiatives: Laying the Foundation for the Modern Presidency
- Effective Use of the President’s Time (2/15/10)
- The National Security Council (NSC) (5/12/2014)
- Moynihan as Presidential Counsellor (11/10/2010)
- The First Lady (4/5/2012)
- The Ash Council (1/29/2014)
- Reorganization Plan 2 of 1970 (11/29/2022)
- The Domestic Council (1/9/2010)
- The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) -Part I (9/11/2014)
- The Office of Management and Budget (OMB)-Part II (5/22/2014)
- The Presidential Appointment Process (6/8/2012)
- Nixon’s Supreme Court Appointments, Part I (11/17/2011)
- Nixon’s Supreme Court Appointments – Part II (11/13/2012)
- Bridging the Branches: How President Nixon Worked with a Democratic Congress (4/30/18)
- The President’s Speechwriters (4/18/2011)