This week’s episode features UCLA PhD candidates Phil Hoffman (History), Lily Hindy (History), and Monica Widmann (Political Science), who have been spearheading a long-term research project with LCHP examining American soft power in the Middle East. They discuss their new report “Skewed Recovery: Minority Assistance Programs to Iraq in Historical Perspective,” which details the ways in which Western powers have historically distributed foreign aid unevenly and according to their political interests. They discuss how this historical trend has sowed division in the region, and how it has been both perpetuated and exacerbated by the Trump Administration. The report will be available online in the coming weeks at luskincenter.history.ucla.edu.