Understanding history requires nuance over nostalgia, an enduring theme of Professor Grant Madsen’s lecture on Reaganomics.
When C-SPAN, the American non-profit television network, began searching for a university course to feature in its “Lectures in History” series, producers did not start with celebrity scholars or viral lecturers. Instead, they combed through university course listings looking for narratives. That search led them to Grant Madsen, history professor at Brigham Young University, and his HIST 398 course: History of American Capitalism.
For Madsen, the invitation was both flattering and telling. He credits BYU’s unique focus on undergraduate education — requiring excellence from faculty in both research and teaching — to produce the kind of course that could resonate with an audience beyond the campus. As a recipient of an Alcuin Fellowship from BYU, Madsen has been recognized for his creativity and interdisciplinary thinking in teaching.
The featured lecture on C-SPAN highlights the economic legacy of Ronald Reagan. Madsen chose that topic because in the arc of his course on capitalism, the discussion of Reagan brings together themes on markets, policy, and political identity. The topic functions as a natural conclusion and translates well to a standalone lecture. Normally, his course relies heavily on discussion and student interaction. To fit C-SPAN’s needs however, Madsen temporarily reshaped the format to a more focused lecture.
The Gap Between Memory and History
At the heart of Madsen’s lecture is a distinction between memory and history. Reagan, he suggests, has become more symbol than substance. Over time, the former president has come to represent a particular vision of conservatism that still shapes American politics. Yet, when historians return to speeches and policy decisions from the 1980s, they find the record is often more complicated than popular memory allows. Madsen structures the lecture around that disparity beginning with straightforward comparison.
“Here’s what Reagan actually did economically speaking,” Madsen describes. “Now here’s how we remember Reagan. Why do we remember him in a way that is different than the historical record says?”
That tension between symbolism and documented fact is not unique to Reagan and reflects what Madsen sees as one of the historian’s central responsibilities — to return to sources and test the stories we tell ourselves. Public memory tends to smooth rough edges. It compresses long, messy processes into digestible narratives with clear heroes, villains, and turning points. History, by contrast, resists that simplification. This approach can be uncomfortable and unsettle assumptions.
“It’s a way of frustrating a narrative they probably already have,” Madsen acknowledges.
Madsen argues that discomfort is productive. By disentangling Reagan the symbol from Reagan the policymaker, Madsen uproots both undue praise and reflexive criticism. For Madsen, studying Reaganomics is not about relitigating the culture wars of the 1980s or indulging in nostalgia for a supposedly simpler era. It is about understanding the roots of present realities.
“We are living the consequences of decisions made long before we were born,” he says. “If we want to change the way the world looks, it helps to know, why did we end up this way in the first place?”
Reaganomics in Context
In the lecture, Madsen places Reagan’s presidency and economic policies within the broader economic and political struggles of the 1970s. A decade that was marked by inflation, energy crises, and a widespread sense of national malaise. Many Americans felt that the country had stalled, both economically and psychologically. Reagan’s election in 1980 represented, in part, a promise of renewed confidence.
Reagan’s policies and rhetoric signaled a shift toward deregulation and a more assertive articulation of free-market principles. Whether those policies succeeded or failed in various respects continues to be debated, but their influence on subsequent decades is undeniable. By tracing that trajectory, Madsen encourages his audience to see the 1980s not as an isolated era but as a pivotal turning point.
The People Behind the Lecture
The C-SPAN recording also highlighted something closer to home: the collaborative culture within the History Department. Hosting a national recording required logistical flexibility and smoothing out technical details. Madsen credits department leadership and staff for coordinating logistics, securing a larger auditorium, and ensuring the filming ran smoothly.
“One of the strengths of the department is recognizing that an opportunity had kind of fallen in our lap and making it possible,” he shares.
Above all, Madsen points to his students. Adapting the course schedule, shifting formats, and engaging thoughtfully on camera required both patience and enthusiasm from them.
“The best thing about BYU is always the students,” he says. “I think [they] are a lot of fun to teach and work with.”
A National Classroom
Though Madsen jokes that C-SPAN may not rival primetime television, he views the experience as meaningful regardless of audience size. With the lecture now part of the public record, the conversation extends beyond campus, inviting viewers far outside Provo, Utah, to reconsider how they remember the past and how that memory shapes the present. In that sense, one of BYU's classrooms expanded, if only briefly, to a national scale.
This thoughtful reconsideration of Reagan’s economic legacy entered living rooms nationwide on Feb. 14.