Doris Kearns Goodwin at CA: Leadership in Turbulent Times

At Colorado Academy’s SPEAK Series lecture on April 2, 2026, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and renowned American presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin inspired an audience of more than 400 parents, faculty and staff members, and guests as she shared an engaging conversation with CA Head of School and fellow historian Dr. Mike Davis on the stage of the Leach Center for the Performing Arts. The two discussed insights and lessons drawn from Goodwin’s decade of first-hand experience in the halls of power of Washington, D.C., during the 1960s, as well as from her groundbreaking research on Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson.

 

Goodwin’s conversation with Dr. Davis was followed by an intimate discussion with CA history students.

Introducing this teacher, scholar, storyteller, best-selling author, television personality, and Boston Red Sox superfan, Dr. Davis acknowledged the turbulent political times of today but laughed as he asked, “Is Major League Baseball’s new Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) ‘challenge’ system tearing our country apart?”

Goodwin offered a typically thought-provoking answer to this ice-breaking question.

“If a mistake is made and it determines the game, the result of a series, then it’s a good thing,” she said. “But on the other hand, there’s human error in everything we do, and I think maybe that you learn more in life if you accept everybody’s going to make errors, and as long as you acknowledge them and you learn something from them, maybe you grow as a person as a result of that. I’m for the umpires.”

 

Goodwin’s vocation as a historian does, in fact, go back to baseball. She recounted that her father would have a six-year-old Doris listen to broadcasts of Brooklyn Dodgers games during the 1940s and 1950s and record by hand every moment of each game: every at-bat, every base taken, every run scored. She learned to retell the games for her father from the beginning, revealing the final outcome only at the very end. 

“That was history; I loved history and I learned how to tell a story because of baseball.”

It was as a 24-year-old graduate student at Harvard that Goodwin turned towards American presidential history. She was selected to join the White House Fellows, one of America’s most prestigious programs for leadership and public service, and at the celebration for the newly chosen Fellow, she shared the dance floor with President Johnson, who told Goodwin that he wanted her to be assigned directly to him—despite her active involvement in the anti-Vietnam War movement.

 

Later, she would go on to assist in the writing of Johnson’s memoirs and remembered, “Mostly, he just wanted to talk; he literally never stopped talking. We would be swimming in his pool and he would be talking, and there were rafts floating nearby with notepads so that I could take something down while I was still in the pool.”

60 years later, Goodwin said, she’s written biographies of Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and many others, and “Suddenly you’ve been studying dead presidents your whole life.”

“What is it about you,” Dr. Davis asked, “that allows you to bring their stories to life with such detail and focus?”

Goodwin replied, “Stories are hardwired in our brains. If I can tell it in a story, then I can remember it.”

Dr. Davis turned the discussion toward a question that was likely on the minds of many in the audience:

“You’ve written about moments in history when the future of the Republic hung in the balance. And I’m curious, how do you see what’s going on in today’s political culture compared to earlier periods of instability?”

 

“This is precisely where history can help us,” according to Goodwin. Those difficult eras she has chosen to write about—the Civil War, the turn of the 20th century, the Great Depression, the 1960s—she chose because they were so turbulent.

“The people living then didn’t know how their story would end,” she said. “They were as anxious as we are, because we don’t know how our story is going to end, either.” 

We’re in a difficult time right now, she continued, “But just imagine what it was like for Lincoln: Seven states have already seceded from the Union, a terrible war that’s going to kill 600,000 people is about to begin. But he knew that democracy was on the line. … Lincoln held out, the Union was restored, and emancipation was secured—but they didn’t know that at the time, either. … So we’ve got to take strength from the fact that during all these hard times, not only did America endure, but it came out stronger.”

Leadership

Dr. Davis referred to CA’s mission statement pledge to create curious, kind, courageous, and adventurous learners and leaders, and asked Goodwin, “Is there a ‘master key’ to leadership?”

Goodwin explained, “There’s not a single master key, but there is a set of emotional qualities that’s required: kindness, humility, the ability to learn from mistakes, empathy—something so missing in our country today—resilience, compassion, and yes, ambition, which may start with yourself and then grows to encompass the greater good. Mostly what a leader needs is emotional intelligence, in other words.”

 

Davis continued, “In our classrooms, we often look at how individuals rise to meet great challenges. If we consider Lincoln—what were the leadership qualities that made him so fit for the task of preserving democracy?”

What made Lincoln special, Goodwin said, was not just the things he did; it was also who he was.

“Lincoln shows us that character matters. Humility: The day after his election, he invited three of his chief rivals into his cabinet. Shouldering blame when things go wrong. And then compassion: As the Union was on the verge of victory, instead of delivering a triumphal message in his Second Inaugural Address, he urges ‘malice toward none, with charity to all. Let us bind up the nation’s wounds’ without retribution or vindictiveness, ‘to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Davis mentioned resilience in the face of failure and adversity as another key leadership quality that is emphasized throughout CA’s curriculum, noting that Theodore Roosevelt at the turn of the 20th century was faced with the seemingly impossible challenge of knitting a country back together.

Goodwin agreed, “The Second Industrial Revolution around the turn of the century is the period that most echoes our own. For the first time, we saw a large gap between rich and poor, growing suspicion of urbanization and immigration, new inventions making many nostalgic for the past.” Roosevelt, for his part, was dealing with the nearly simultaneous deaths of his wife and mother. 

 

But, noted Goodwin, as a leader of the Progressive Movement, he championed his “Square Deal” domestic policies, prioritized conservation, and established national parks, forests, and monuments to preserve the nation’s natural resources. “Roosevelt’s message of a Square Deal for the rich and the poor, the capitalist and the laborer, remains a good message today.”

Not long afterward, Dr. Davis said, it was Franklin Roosevelt who provided yet another example of resilient leadership. “How did FDR translate vision into meaningful action during his own tumultuous era?”

Like FDR’s determination to walk despite being paralyzed by polio, Goodwin explained, his optimism and courage in the early 1930s “gave Americans the feeling that we were all working together toward the end of the Great Depression, with a leader who could tell them there was ‘nothing to fear but fear itself.’” 

And then later, when Roosevelt was forced to turn his attention to Europe and the threat of Hitler, he bravely pivoted again, making a partner of American industry to scale up manufacturing for the American military at an unprecedented rate. “Knowing that kind of business-government partnership was possible then has to give us some hope today,” said Goodwin.

Front-row seat

During the 1960s, the author had a front-row seat to history as President Johnson took office after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. While working on his memoirs, she said, Johnson told her what it was like to step into that breach.

 

“He knew people didn’t really trust him yet. So almost the very first thing he did in office to show that he was the president, and to demonstrate the values that he believed in, was to make the passage of the Civil Rights Act and ending segregation in the South his number-one priority.”

When advisors told him he had only a certain amount of “currency” to spend as a president, and insisted that he shouldn’t spend it on civil rights, Goodwin recounted, Johnson in a famous moment of courage said, “Then what the hell is the presidency for?”

Later, in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, Goodwin was watching the events live on television as marchers along the famous Selma to Montgomery route were led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in nonviolent protests for Black Americans’ right to vote. Her husband, Richard Goodwin, was President Johnson’s main speechwriter, and penned in just a few short hours the address that would spur the passage of the historic Voting Rights Act. Known as the “We Shall Overcome” speech, it began, “I speak tonight for the dignity of man, and the destiny of democracy,” and used the lyrics of the civil rights anthem to unite the country.

“We should remember that right now, voting is still the most important thing that we should pay attention to in all of today’s complexity,” according to Goodwin.

And we must all remember, she added, that “These leaders are examples to our kids, to all of us. And their greatness consists of character, the moral qualities of their being.”

When Dr. Davis asked, “What gives you hope? What actions can all of us take to build a more just and thriving society?” Goodwin replied with a challenge. 

“It’s really not up to the leaders—it’s up to us. When Abraham Lincoln was called a liberator, he said, ‘Don't call me that, it was the anti-slavery movement and the Union soldiers who won the war.’ It was the Progressive Movement, already in the cities, that made Teddy Roosevelt’s name famous. The Union Movement was just as important in what FDR was able to accomplish, and so was the Civil Rights Movement for LBJ. Change comes from the ground up; and that means government is us. Citizen engagement is absolutely essential.”

And who will be the next great American president, one audience member wondered.

“That’s what the primary system will show us,” answered Goodwin. “Nobody knew that Abraham Lincoln was the man he would become until the 1860 Republican National Convention. There are plenty of similar people out there right now—we just have to see them and judge whether they are authentic.”

She went on, “Today, we cover campaigns wrongly: We talk about who’s raising the most money, who says the most outlandish thing. Instead we should study the qualities people show us: Do they have empathy? Do they have humility? Can they acknowledge errors? Do they have kindness? Do they have compassion? Where’s their ambition? What’s their purpose? That’s how we should be looking at every future leader.”

Advice for students

Guests were reluctant to leave the buzzing Leach Center for the Performing Arts after such inspiring words, but they did so to make way for a group of Juniors and Seniors in the Advanced Studies and Research class Ideas & Inventions, who arrived for their own session with Goodwin. 

 

The students were in the midst of researching and drafting their final papers on a wide range of topics in philosophy and human and technological development; Goodwin’s Leadership in Turbulent Times was a central text during their yearlong course, according to Instructor Dr. Ben Hoffman.

Reflecting on how she chooses what to write about, Goodwin told the students, “I’m a biographer, so I only choose people that I’d want to live with. It takes so long to finish the work that having a passion for your subject—whether it’s an event, or a person, or a period of time—that’s really important.”

One student was curious how Goodwin goes about judging the impact of any leader, given the many intangible qualities which seem to figure in the equation. 

“You judge the person in the context of their times,” she replied. “Some people say that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation came too late, or that Franklin Roosevelt didn’t do enough to help Jews escaping from Hitler’s Germany. In everyone and everything you study, you’re going to find flaws—they’re human beings. It’s important to recognize the possibilities that were available to them at the time.”

 

Asked to talk about her most recent book, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, Goodwin reminisced about working with her late husband to unearth hundreds of boxes of papers from that critical time in American history. 

Her husband, Richard, had long ago closed the door on the 1960s, bitter about America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. But revisiting those detailed archives brought back all the good of the era, before the war began.

“History can be a way of healing, I think. History has so many jobs to do. It can give perspective, it can give solace, it can give hope.”

What about bias in authoring historical works, one student wanted to know.

“First, you just have to acknowledge that bias is going to be there,” explained Goodwin. “It doesn’t mean you’re going to go somewhere that the evidence doesn’t; it just means you have to be honest about the failures or the mistakes.”

In the case of Lyndon Johnson, to whom she was close, Goodwin continued, “He was clearly so extraordinary with domestic politics, but we also have to admit that that facility was just not there with the situation in Vietnam. He was worried about not failing, rather than pursuing a vision for succeeding. He hunkered down among his advisors, instead of getting more people aboard to tell him something different. So you just have to be straight with yourself, even though it might hurt you to do so.”

What if the facts conflict with happy endings?

There will be frustration, she said. She often believes she knows what one of her subjects was probably thinking at a certain moment, “because I know them so well through research and primary sources,” she said, “but if they didn’t actually say it, if it isn’t in a letter or document that someone else wrote, then you can’t write what they were thinking. The facts are always more important than anything you can make up.”

Yet happy endings have an almost irresistible appeal. “I hate it when my subject dies at the end of the book,” Goodwin admitted. “I search and search until I find the happy ending somewhere in the facts.”

One student posed a final question: Are high schools adequately informing students about the importance of history, allowing them to really engage and learn to love history?

Goodwin observed, “Everybody should love history. It’s the kind of subject that, if it’s taught well, it’s about people; it’s about conflict; it’s about what we live in every day. You’re lucky—the minute I walked on campus I could tell there was something special about CA. The history you learn here—it’s a huge gift you’ll take with you.”