From Deference to Defiance: How the 60s Unraveled the Cold War Consensus
Tuesday, Oct 13, 2026
1:30pm - 3:30pm
Lecture by:
Andrew Hunt
In the early 1960s, Cold War assumptions – faith in American leadership, acceptance of militarized containment, and deference to national security expertise – shaped political culture in the United States and much of the Western world. By decade’s end, however, that consensus had become fragmented. This lecture examines how the upheavals of the 1960s transformed public attitudes toward the Cold War, moving them from broad acceptance to skepticism, dissent, and, in some cases, outright defiance. Focusing primarily on the United States, the lecture traces how the Civil Rights Movement exposed contradictions between Cold War rhetoric and domestic realities; how nuclear anxieties fueled the Ban-the-Bomb movement; and how the escalating war in Vietnam radicalized students, intellectuals, and veterans alike. Popular culture played a central role in this unraveling, as films such as Dr. Strangelove, The Bedford Incident, and The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming satirized or questioned the logic of Cold War brinkmanship. The lecture also situates the American experience within a wider global context, exploring parallel developments abroad—from the revolutionary fervor of 1968 to the Prague Spring and other challenges to Cold War orthodoxies. Together, these movements reshaped political discourse and redefined the boundaries of dissent during a pivotal decade.
About Andrew Hunt
Andrew Hunt
Andrew Hunt was born in Calgary, Alberta, but raised in the United States, in California and Utah, the son of an economics professor. He developed a passion for U.S. history at a young age, and he has studied it nonstop ever since. He was educated in Utah and Wisconsin, ultimately receiving his Doctorate from the University of Utah in 1997. That year, he came to work at the University of Waterloo as an assistant professor of United States History. He teaches courses on U.S. Survey History (pre- 1865 and post-1865), the History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in the United States, The Beatles and the Sixties, the Civil Rights Movement, and the United States in the Long Sixties (1955- 1973). He is the author of such books as The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (1999), David Dellinger: The Life and Times of a Nonviolent Revolutionary (2006), We Begin Bombing in Five Minutes: Cold War Culture in the Age of Reagan (2021), and Beatlemania in America: Fan Culture From Below (2023). He is also the author of an award-winning series of mystery novels set in Utah, including City of Saints (2012), A Killing in Zion (2015), and Desolation Flats (2016). He is currently at work on two book projects: Southern California and popular culture in the 1960s, and maverick American Jewish directors in Postwar United States. He enjoys spending time with his family, his cats, watching Turner Classic Movies, writing, and reading.