Presidential historian and noted author Douglas Brinkley will be the featured speaker at the University of Kentucky's 2024 Wendell H. Ford Public Policy Lecture at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, October 8 at the Singletary Center for the Arts.

The lecture is hosted by UK's Martin School of Public Policy and Administration, and co-sponsored by UK Libraries and the College of Communication and Information.  It is free and open to the public.

Brinkley, a well-known expert on U.S. presidents and American history, is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University.  His appearance at UK will come exactly four weeks before the November 5 election.

 "Douglas Brinkley is one of the foremost historians and political observers of our time," said Ron Zimmer, the Martin School director.  "We are looking forward with great anticipation to hearing his perspective on the upcoming presidential election."

Brinkley was one of three nationally-recognized historians called on by C-SPAN in 2000 to develop a framework for the first Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership.  The group recommended 10 qualities of presidential leadership and helped design the survey's organization, execution, and analysis of the results.  Brinkley today remains part of the C-SPAN core group, which released its most recent presidential rankings in 2021.

In 2022, Brinkley published Silent Spring Revolution, which chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the 1960s.  Fellow historian Doris Kearns Goodwin praised it as "not only a majestic work of history; it is an urgent call for our time."  He also has published nonfiction books on Dean Acheson, Jimmy Carter, Walter Cronkite, Gerald Ford, Henry Ford, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Rosa Parks, Ronald Reagan, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt.  Six of his books have been selected as "Notable Books of the Year" by the New York Times and seven made the Times' bestseller list.

Brinkley holds a bachelor's degree from The Ohio State University and master's and doctoral degrees from Georgetown University.  He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Century Association, Society of American Historians, and James Madison Council of the Library of Congress.  He is on the Board of Trustees at Brevard College and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library

This year's program marks the 10th anniversary of the Ford Lecture, first held on November 13, 2014 with former Senate Republican Whip Alan Simpson of Wyoming as the featured speaker.  The event is held in honor of the late former Kentucky governor and four-term U.S. Senator, who lectured at the Martin School after retiring from the Senate in 1999.