U.S. History: 20th century culture and politics; democracy; constitutional history; civil liberties; foreign relations; political institutions and political economy; media history; cultural globalization.
Sam Lebovic is an historian of U.S. politics, culture, civil liberties, and foreign relations. He teaches broadly in these areas; his research focuses on the ways that democratic life and the public sphere have been shaped by corporate power and the national security state in the twentieth century. Educated at the University of Sydney and the University of Chicago, he held postdoctoral fellowships at NYU and Rutgers before coming to Mason in 2013.
His first book, Free Speech and Unfree News (Harvard, 2016), provided a new account of American press freedom in the twentieth century. It argued that the right to free speech was inadequate to produce a democratic press in an era defined by corporate media consolidation and the rise of state secrecy. Free Speech and Unfree News won the Paul Murphy Prize in Civil Liberties from the American Society for Legal History and the Ellis Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians (for best book on the history of politics or political economy). You can see a lecture based on this book here.
His second book, A Righteous Smokescreen: Postwar America and the Politics of Cultural Globalization, was published by the University of Chicago Press in May 2022. Focusing on efforts to manage the international flow of culture from the 1940s to the 1970s – educational exchange programs, international cultural institutions, visa and passport policies – it shows how the U.S. sought to export its culture at the same time that it insulated its own public sphere from foreign influence. The result, the book reveals, was a lopsided flow of international culture: the world knew more about American culture than Americans knew about the world. Understand the political history of cultural exchange, the books shows, helps us rethink the histories of U.S. culture, foreign policy, and globalization.
Lebovic’s essays and articles on media, politics, and history have been published in a number of leading scholarly journals and edited collections, as well as such places as Dissent, The Boston Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Boston Globe, Columbia Journalism Review, and Politico.
Lebovic currently serves as Co-Editor of the Journal of Social History. In this role he has edited special issues focused on the history of neoliberalism (2019) and the history of the security state (forthcoming).
Lebovic is currently completing a new book, the first narrative history of the Espionage Act, which has been used not only to prosecute spies but also to punish dissidents during World War 1 and leakers of classified information today. Under contract with Basic Books, and forthcoming in 2023, this book uses the surprising evolution of this controversial law to explore the challenges that national security secrecy has posed to democratic life over the past century.
Free Speech and Unfree News: The Paradox of Press Freedom in America (Harvard University Press, 2016)
Awarded 2017 Ellis W. Hawley Prize by the Organization of American Historians (for best book on the political economy, politics, or institutions of the U.S. from the Civil War to the present)
Awarded 2012 Paul Murphy Prize in the History of Civil Liberties by the American Society for Legal History (in support of book completion)
“The Conservative Press and the Interwar Origins of First Amendment Lochnerism,” Law and History Review 39, no.3 (August 2021): 539-567
“The Politics of Pluralism: Debating Media Diversity in Australia, c.1976,” Australian Historical Studies 51, no.4 (October 2020): 401-419
“No Right to Leave the Nation: The Politics of Passport Denial and the Rise of the National Security State,” Studies in American Political Development 34, no.1 (April 2020): 170-193
“From Censorship to Classification: The Evolution of the Espionage Act,” in Whistleblowing Nation: The History of National Security Disclosures and the Cult of State Secrecy eds. Kaeten Mistry and Hannah Gurman (Columbia University Press, 2020)
Lebovic has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, the George Mason Center for Humanities Research, the National Library of Australia, the LMU-Munich Center for Global History, the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University, the Frederic Ewen Academic Freedom Center at NYU, and the Truman Institute.
Graduate: Cultural Globalization, History of the U.S. State, Global Migrations, American Internationalism, U.S. National Security State, American Democracy, U.S. and the Pacific World.
Undergraduate: History of the American Media, The U.S. and World Power, Cold War America, Introduction to World History.