Advance ticket sales have ended but plenty of additional tickets remain available at the door.
Profs and Pints DC presents: “Watergate and Its Legacy,” a fiftieth anniversary look at a landmark political scandal and its impact on thinking about crime and the American presidency, with Christine Blackerby, public historian, exhibits curator at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, and scholar of congressional and federal history.
“I Am Not a Crook!” President Richard Nixon famously declared as he and his administration were caught up in the Watergate scandal, involving allegations of criminal activity at the highest levels of government.
But was he guilty of crimes? What would happen to a president in the same position today?
Mark the fiftieth anniversary of the conclusion of one of the darkest chapters of American history with a Profs and Pints talk offering an overview of the Watergate scandal and issues and questions from it that continue to resonate. The speaker, Christine Blackerby, has curated an exhibit at the U.S. Capitol on Congressional investigations and regularly publishes articles and delivers talks on a range of topics in federal history.
She’ll give an overview of key developments in the Watergate scandal, discussing how it began in 1972 with a break-in at Democratic Party headquarters by people associated with President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign, evolved into a battle over access to tape-recorded evidence about the crime and subsequent coverup, and ended with Nixon’s August 1974 resignation under threat of impeachment.
We’ll examine how Congress, the justice system, and the American people responded to charges that the President of the United States may have committed crimes. You’ll learn how there were multiple overlapping Watergate investigations—in the Senate and House of Representatives and by a Special Prosecutor from the Department of Justice. They surfaced tales of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, perjury, wiretapping, money laundering, hush money payments, and more.
At the heart of the scandal was a debate about the rule of law and the extent of the power of executive privilege, two issues that continue to be contested today. A half century later, the lessons learned from Watergate remain remarkably relevant. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: From a portrait of Richard Nixon painted by Norman Rockwell in 1968. (National Portrait Gallery / Creative Commons.)