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Enter Barbara Hackman Franklin
In a memorandum to the heads of the executive departments and agencies dated April 21, 1971, President Richard Nixon announced a program to recruit top women for mid- and high-level positions in the federal government. The president wrote, “it has been my desire to...
Diplomacy Under Smoggy Skies
“Tokyo Threatened by Killing Pollution” was the headline that greeted newspaper readers on December 9th, 1970. The article, a piece by Michael Hornsby written originally for the Times in London, detailed Japan's environmental struggles. It began by covering Tokyo's...
Okinawa Down…More Issues to Go
This political cartoon from August 1971 suggests a foreboding future for relations with Japan. Fortunately, the reality was not so grim.One of the first National Security Study Memoranda (NSSMs) President Nixon issued was NSSM 5, a study on US policy toward Japan. The...
Changing Gender Roles and the Equal Rights Amendments
Historically speaking, women have been consigned to the confines of the private, domestic sphere; tradition dictates that women are the homemaker, the caregiver, and the mother. However, how has this tradition been reconciled with the trend of women moving into the...
The Origins of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969
The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 is one of the most important pieces of environmental policy passed in the 20th century. Often referred to as the Magna Carta of Environmental Policy, it laid out a uniform national approach to environmental issues. Its...
Amid Middle East Strife, Nixon Brought Hope
By the late 1960s, conditions in the Middle East were tumultuous. Israel had captured and held mass swaths of territory, and tensions with its neighbors were at an all-time high. However, the election of a new U.S. President brought hope in 1969 that stability and...
The Formation of a New National Security Council
After winning the election of 1968, then President-elect Richard Nixon and his Assistant for National Security Affairs Dr. Henry Kissinger set about restoring the National Security Council to its preeminent role in foreign policy planning. Nixon’s belief that foreign...
Developing Nixon’s China Policy
Richard Nixon’s 1953 Far East Trip holds pivotal, if little known, importance in the history of US-China relations. It was on this trip that Nixon realized the true importance of China in the fight against communism, and began to take it seriously as a significant...
The Pressures which Led to the Reversion of Okinawa
The Nixon administration issued 206 National Security Study Memoranda (NSSMs). These memos ordered the National Security Council to produce studies on topics which either the President or his Assistant for National Security Affairs, Henry Kissinger, considered...
1953: VP Nixon in Japan
The presidency of Richard Nixon played a crucial role in the development of post-World War II relations between Japan and the United States, which culminated in the return of Okinawa to the Japanese government in 1972. However, RN’s encouragement of Japanese autonomy...