Award-winning historian Gary Bergera joins John Hatch to talk about the complicated legacy of Ernest L. Wilkinson, who served as BYU president from 1951–71. From Wilkinson’s dogged determination, to the challenges he posed for church presidents David O. McKay and Harold B. Lee, Bergera unpacks how Wilkinson’s personality shaped the university—and how he often misunderstood the impact he had on others. Bergera is the editor of the new documentary history, Educating Zion: The Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson.Gary James Bergera was managing director of Signature Books from 1984 to 2000 and managing director of the Smith–Pettit Foundation from 2001 to 2022. He is the author or editor of eleven books. Most recently he edited the diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, published in three volumes as Confessions of a Mormon Historian. His publications have received awards from the Charles Redd Center at BYU, the Utah Historical Society, the Mormon History Association (MHA), the John Whitmer Historical Association, and the Dialogue Foundation. He served on the board of directors of MHA and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Mormon History and the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal. In 2018 he received MHA’s Leonard J. Arrington lifetime achievement award.

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