The Cold War | Teacher Symposium

The Cold War

The US, the USSR, and the World, 1942 to 2022

This course examines turning points in the Cold War and considers the domestic consequences for the peoples of the two superpowers and the developing world of this era.

 

Lead Scholar: Timothy Naftali
Master Teacher: Jermain Corbin

 

Image: Warren K. Leffler or Thomas J. O’Halloran photograph of an anti-Vietnam war demonstration in front of the White House in support of singer Eartha Kitt, January 19, 1968 (US News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress)

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A photograph of anti-Vietnam War demonstrators carrying signs, "No more...Stop the war!", "Eartha Kitt speaks for the women of America", and "Stop the draft", picketing in front of the White House.

  • Up to 24 PD Hours

Course Description

We are still living in the world created by the era known as the Cold War. The four decades following the end of World War II witnessed a dangerous competition between two antagonistic and nuclear-armed superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. These years also saw dramatic decolonization across the global south, which had the effect of transforming the superpower competition into the most global conflict in world history. In this course we will not only look at what we now know of the turning points in the superpower competition—the three Berlin crises (1948, 1958, 1961); the Korean War; superpower covert action in Iran, Guatemala, Congo, Cuba, Guyana, Angola, and Nicaragua; the Cuban Missile Crisis; Vietnam and the Soviet Invasions of Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968) and Afghanistan (1979); and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989—but also consider the domestic consequences for the peoples of the two superpowers and the developing world of this era of nuclear danger and ideological conflict. Finally, we will examine how this conflict ended and the legacies that shaped the decade following the Cold War and, most notably in the case of the war in Ukraine, that continue to this day.

A photograph of anti-Vietnam War demonstrators carrying signs, "No more...Stop the war!", "Eartha Kitt speaks for the women of America", and "Stop the draft", picketing in front of the White House.

Warren K. Leffler or Thomas J. O’Halloran photograph of an anti-Vietnam War demonstration in front of the White House in support of singer Eartha Kitt, January 19, 1968 (US News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress)

Optional Book Talk

You may attend Professor Naftali’s book talk on Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary, regardless of which symposium course you select. Symposium participants who attend the optional book talks earn additional PD credit.

Recommended Readings (Optional)

Truman, Churchill, and Stalin

Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, and Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference in Germany, July 1945 (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC04457)

  • Frantz Fanon, Toward the African Revolution (in French, 1964; 1st English translation, 1967)
  • Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (W. W. Norton, 1997)
  • Robert Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (Simon & Schuster, 1996)
  • Vaclav Havel, To the Castle and Back: A Memoir (Knopf, 2007)
  • M. E. Sarotte, Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post–Cold War Stalemate (Yale, 2021)
  • William Taubman, Gorbachev: His Life and Times (W. W. Norton, 2017)

Course Leaders

Tim Naftali Headshot

Timothy Naftali, Lead Scholar

Timothy Naftali, formerly a clinical professor of public service at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, clinical professor of history in NYU’s College of Arts and Science, and director of NYU’s undergraduate public policy program, joined Columbia University in July 2023 as a senior research scholar at the School of International and Public Affairs. Naftali, whose book Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary with Aleksandr Fursenko won the Royal United Services Institute’s Duke of Westminster’s medal for military literature in 2007, is a pioneer in the study of modern international and espionage history and a well-recognized presidential historian. 
 

Headshot of Master Teacher Jermain Corbin

Jermain Corbin, Master Teacher

Jermain Corbin is a master teacher with the Gilder Lehrman Institute and has worked in Boston Public Schools since 1999. He currently teaches 6th, 7th, and 8th grade history at the James F. Condon K–8 School in South Boston. Jermain has master’s degrees in history, secondary education, and American studies. He is also a twelve-year veteran of the Massachusetts National Guard and has served combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He is a member of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and the Massachusetts Historical Society.