The Future of History: Have We Reached the End of History Again?

A panel revisiting Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man amid rising authoritarianism. What comes next?

Introducing a new multi-part series on “The Future of History,” co-sponsored by the Wende Museum and the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy.

This panel revisits the conclusion of political scientist Francis Fukuyama in his 1992 book The End of History, that we have reached “the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” Today, we are forced to ask whether the rise of illiberal authoritarianism marks a new end of history.

How should we think about the next phase of history? As part of an unfolding journey into the future, or as the beginning of the end?

Miloš Jovanović is Assistant Professor of History at UCLA. His first book, Cities of Dust and Mud: Urbanism and Bourgeois Fantasy in the Balkans (Stanford University Press, 2026), explores the social costs of elite-led urban change. His new research project, Spaces of Empire: The Habsburg World and its Afterlives, examines the diverse trajectories of urban spaces after imperial collapse.

David N. Myers is Distinguished Professor of History and holds the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA. He is the founding director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. He also directs the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate, the UCLA Dialogue Across Difference Initiative, and the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute. He is the author or editor of more than fifteen books, including American Shtetl (winner of the 2022 National Jewish Book Award).

Natasha Piano is Assistant Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science at UCLA. She specializes in democratic theory and the history of political thought, focusing on realist and empirical traditions in political science and Italian political theory. Her book, Democratic Elitism: The Founding Myth of American Political Science (Harvard University Press, 2025), examines how misinterpretations of elite theory shaped American political systems.

Terry Tang is Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Times. Appointed in 2024, she is the first female editor in the paper’s history. Before joining the Los Angeles Times in 2019, she served as director of publications and editorial at the American Civil Liberties Union and held multiple editorial roles at The New York Times. She holds a BA from Yale and a JD from New York University School of Law.

As the Wende's galleries will be open during this program, you may enter through the front doors of the museum. Theater doors open 15 minutes before the start time. Seating is first come, first served. An RSVP does not guarantee admission once capacity is reached. No late entry.