The Conference on the Reagan Presidency held on the campus of the University of California Santa Barbara from March 28-30 was a big success. The goal of the conference was to promote a "second-generation" scholarly assessment of the Reagan administration. Organizers had planned the conference to coincide with the release of President Reagan's policy advisory papers under the 1978 Presidential Records Act. Our plans were partially foiled when President Bush issued an executive order in December 2001 which barred archivists from releasing any more of a president's records until the sitting president and the former president's representatives gave their approval. Conference participants' hopes were buoyed when two weeks before the conference, on March 15, 20002, the archivists at the Reagan Library announced that 59,850 pages of previously restricted materials were being released. These newly released papers deal with issues such as Robert Bork's confirmation battle, the public relations strategy surrounding Reagan's Saturday morning radio addresses, as well as information on Reagan's civil rights and human rights policies. Many of the scholars at the Conference drew upon the papers at the Reagan Library to research their individual topics.

In all, Conference organizers put together over twenty-five panels dealing with such issues as Reagan's rhetoric, his role in ending the Cold War, his relations with Congress, and the role of the Religious Right in the Reagan presidency. Historian James T. Patterson, journalist and biographer Lou Cannon, and former National Security Adviser to Reagan, Richard Allen, each gave a keynote address. In addition, there was a special roundtable discussion about gaining access to the presidential papers. The Institute of Governmental Studies was well represented at the Conference. Casey Knudsen-Dominguez presented a paper entitled "The President's Honeymoon with Congress: Explaining Reagan's 1981 Victory;" Terri Bimes presented a paper entitled "The New Conservative Populism: Reagan's Rhetoric in Historical Perspective;" and Allison Wegner Leof, although unable to attend, submitted a paper entitled "Sowing the Seeds of Conflict: How Ronald Reagan's Appointments Changed the Nature of the Senate Confirmation Process." These papers will be available as part of the IGS Working Paper Collection (for copies, see the IGS website. Several of the papers from the conference will also be available in an edited volume being published by University Press of Kansas.

The Conference was dedicated to the memory of Hugh Davis Graham, who died of cancer on Tuesday, March 26th, two days before the Conference was to begin. Without the efforts of Hugh Graham and Elliot Brownlee, the Conference on the Reagan Presidency would have never materialized. Hugh Graham was an exceptional scholar and person. His presence will be sorely missed, especially by scholars who study the presidency and the history of civil rights in America.

The Conference on the Reagan Presidency was sponsored by the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, Vanderbilt University, UCSB College of Letters and Sciences, the History, Economics, and Political Science Departments of UCSB, UC Berkeley Institution of Governmental Studies, All-University of California Group in Economic History, The University Press of Kansas, and the Young America's Foundation: The Reagan Ranch.