When 15,000 journalists swarm into Cleveland July 18-21 to cover the Republican National Convention, two expert presidential historians from the Miller Center will be there to provide on-demand context, historical analysis, and quotes for their stories and broadcasts.

Barbara Perry, the Director of Presidential Studies and co-chair of the Presidential Oral History Program, and Nicole Hemmer, an Assistant Professor of Presidential Studies, will be stationed inside the Cleveland Convention Center just outside “media row” throughout the convention.

Meanwhile, just a few blocks from the convention venue in Cleveland (and, a week later, in Philadelphia), the Miller Center will present two public panels as part of its ongoing First Year Project devoted to the next president’s make-or-break first year in office.

The RNC panel on July 19, featuring former Mississippi Governor and RNC chair Haley Barbour and Clay Johnson, White House Director of Presidential Personnel under President George W. Bush, and the Democratic convention panel on July 26, featuring former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, will each explore lessons that corporate CEOs can—and cannot—teach the next president. (To register to attend either panel, contact Policy Director Jeff Chidester.)

In keeping with the Miller Center’s long tradition of nonpartisan analysis of the American presidency, Perry and Hemmer will not be “spinning” reporters like typical pundits and commentators. Instead, they’ll be offering the kind of historical analogies and insights that only scholars deeply engaged with the study of the presidency can provide.

“If there’s a fight to try to wrest the nomination from Donald Trump, reporters might wonder whether there are historical precedents for that,” said Perry. “We are uniquely positioned to answer such questions.” (For the record, in 1912, 349 GOP delegates refused to cast their votes at the convention as a show of opposition to incumbent president William Howard Taft, who became the nominee—and lost to Woodrow Wilson because the Republican electorate split between Taft and third-party candidate former president Theodore Roosevelt.)

Perry is a sought-after expert on the modern presidents who has been featured in hundreds of newspaper and broadcast reports ranging from The New York Times and the Washington Post to CNN, CBS, Fox News, and NPR.

Among her 13 authored or edited books are Rose Kennedy: The Life and Times of a Political Matriarch; 41: Inside the Presidency of George H. W. Bush; The Supremes: An Introduction to the United States Supreme Court Justices; Jacqueline Kennedy: First Lady of the New Frontier; and 42: Inside the Presidency of Bill Clinton, to be published in August.

Hemmer is a contributing editor to U.S. News & World Report, where she writes a weekly column about politics and history, and a syndicated columnist for The Age in Melbourne, Australia. Her presidential and political analysis has also appeared in national and international publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the Los Angeles Times and the Sydney Morning Herald. Her book Messengers of the Right, a history of conservative media in the United States, will be published in August.

Both Miller Center experts will be stationed with the LexisNexis research company in their booth adjacent to the press filing center.

This service to the media is part of the Miller Center's First Year Project, which focuses on the key issues the next president must confront, viewed through the clarifying lens of history and amplified with actionable advice from leading scholars, former administration officials, and policy experts.

The latest volume of First Year essays launches July 14, offering counsel to the next president on navigating a political system that many Americans feel is broken.

In fact, history shows that things have been much worse—and presidents have found ways to bring the country together. A new video in the First Year series highlights the lessons that Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and the modern presidents have all learned.