The Presidency of Joseph R. Biden: A First Historical Assessment

Roosevelt House is pleased to present a panel of leading presidential scholars for a retrospective discussion—perhaps the first of its kind—of the Biden presidency, moderated by acclaimed political historian Julian Zelizer, editor of the new book, The Presidency of Joseph R. Biden: A First Historical Assessment. The panel includes three distinguished contributors to the volume: John Fabian Witt, Timothy Naftali, and Khalil Gibran Muhammad. Welcoming remarks by Roosevelt House Director Harold Holzer. The Presidency of Joseph R. Biden offers a first draft of history by providing insights into how this one-term president fits within the broader historical forces shaping American life in the 21st century. Editor Julian Zelizer brings together some of today’s foremost experts on presidential history to give balanced and original assessments of the major issues of the Biden years—from education and reproductive rights to the economy, labor relations, climate policy, race, cultural issues, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Together, the incisive essays trace the full arc of Joe Biden’s presidency from its early successes to the setbacks that ultimately consumed it. His domestic legislative achievements were hailed by some as the most momentous of any presidency since the Great Society while his foreign policy was said to ably address the challenges posed by America’s great power rivals. Yet by late 2024, as the book shows, President Biden’s legacy was in tatters, overshadowed by immigration concerns, inflation, the war in Gaza, and the president’s evident physical decline. The Presidency of Joseph R. Biden moves beyond the day-by-day journalistic coverage to provide the first comprehensive scholarly account of the Biden administration’s achievements, and eventual downfall. “This is contemporary history at its finest.” —Jonathan Alter Julian E. Zelizer, moderator, is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. A columnist for Foreign Policy and the author of “The Long View” on Substack, he is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author and editor of numerous books, including Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich and the Rise of the New Republican Party; The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment; and In Defense of Partisanship, for which he appeared at Roosevelt House. Khalil Gibran Muhammad is the inaugural Professor of African American Studies and Public Affairs at Princeton University, where he directs the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project. Board Chair of the Vera Institute of Justice, he is the former Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the former Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, and the New York Times, including an essay for The 1619 Project.  Timothy Naftali is a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a CNN Presidential Historian. Formerly a clinical associate professor of history and public service at New York University, he served as founding director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs Presidential Recordings Program and director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. His books include: George H. W. Bush: The American Presidents Series; Impeachment: An American History; and, with Aleksandr Fursenko, Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary.  John Fabian Witt is the Allen H. Duffy class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School and a professor in the Yale history department. He is the author of a number of books, including Lincoln’s Code, which was awarded the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The New Republic. His most recent book is The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America. Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, April 23, 2026.