Description

Notables associated with President Lyndon B. Johnson gather to recall the roots and legacy of “The Great Society” in two-hour special.

Influential writers, politicians, and commentators – including Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Robert A. Caro, former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, former U.S. Sen. George McGovern, and veteran journalist Bill Moyers – together explore the roots and legacy of the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson in a two-hour special, “siting the Great Society: The Role of Government From FDR and LBJ To Today”, premiering Monday, April 23 (2012) at 9 AM, 3 PM, and 9 PM on CUNY TV.

The special will be repeated on Saturday, April 28 at 4 PM and Sunday, April 29 at 1 PM, and may be seen online after April 23 at www.cuny.tv.

From the opening session of a two-day symposium held in New York City in March – presented by the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College/CUNY – the television special is highlighted by a panel discussion, moderated by CBS News’ Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer, featuring members of LBJ’s core group of advisors, and politicians who had key relationships with the president.

Messrs. Califano, McGovern, Mondale, Moyers, and LBJ’s education and welfare aide Ervin Duggan are the participants on the panel. Collectively they provide an assessment of LBJ’s leadership style and political acumen, as well as the ways they believe the lessons of his presidency are pertinent today.

The broadcast features archival photographs and historic audio recordings of the 36th U.S. president, including a 1963 phone conversation with Martin Luther King Jr., another in which the late president exerts his will upon a Republican senator, and a 1965 speech before a joint session of Congress.

Also featured in the broadcast is a moving keynote address by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Robert A. Caro, author of the five-volume biography, The Years of Lyndon Johnson – the fourth volume of which will be published on May 1st of this year – and The Power Broker, about Robert Moses.

In her welcoming remarks, Hunter College President Jennifer Raab speaks of Hunter’s historic relationship to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and the college’s purchase and renovation of Roosevelt House for the Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, housed in the Roosevelt family’s former New York residence. Mark K. Updegrove, Director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum, describes the roots of LBJ’s Great Society in the New Deal presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Joseph A. Califano, Jr., special assistant to President Johnson (1965-69), former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (1977-79), and a catalyst for the conference, provides the introduction to Robert Caro.