2024-25 Speakers
Eric Foner: How the Lessons of Reconstruction Have Impacted the Political Climate
September 18, 2024
4:30 p.m.–6:00 p.m.
Kresge Auditorium
In a book review, Steven Hahn of New York University wrote of Eric Foner: "Like his mentor Richard Hofstadter, he has had an enormous influence on how other historians, as well as a good cut of the general reading public, have come to think about American history. This is the result of his voluminous scholarship and of his decades as a teacher. Indeed, when one considers the chronological and topical range of Foner's many books and essays—not to mention those of his doctoral students—only Hofstadter, C. Vann Woodward, David Brion Davis, and, in an earlier era, Charles Beard (who was also at Columbia) would seem to be his genuine rivals in impact and accomplishment." An article on the Bloomberg website recently described him as "one of America's greatest historians." On a somewhat different note, the Oklahoma Gazette wrote of a talk by Professor Foner at Oklahoma University, "suffice it to say that his giving a free lecture on OU's campus is just really, incredibly, super cool."
Adam Berinsky: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It
September 26, 2024
4:30 p.m.–6:00 p.m.
Kresge Auditorium
Berinsky received his B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1992 and his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2000. For the last 15 years, Berinsky has been studying political rumors and misinformation. Berinsky has won several scholarly awards and is the recipient of multiple grants from the National Science Foundation. He is also the founding director of the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab. In 2016, Berinsky was appointed a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow to study how political rumors spread and how they can be effectively debunked.
Rachel Wahl, "Keeping Our Enemies Closer: Political Dialogue on College Campuses"
October 16, 2024
4:30 p.m.–6:00 p.m.
Kresge Auditorium
Rachel Wahl is also the director of the Good Life Political Project at the Karsh Institute of Democracy and a fellow at UVA’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. Her research focuses on learning through public deliberation between people on opposing sides of political divides. Her prior research focused on efforts by community activists to change police officers’ beliefs and behavior through activism and education, which is the subject of her first book, Just Violence: Torture and Human Rights in the Eyes of the Police (Stanford University Press, 2017). Her research has been funded by donors such as the Spencer Foundation, National Academy of Education, the Carnegie Corporation, and the federal Institute of International Education.
Daniel Ziblatt
October 21, 2024
4:30 p.m.–6:00 p.m.
Kresge Auditorium
Daniel Ziblatt is the director of Harvard's University where he is also Eaton Professor of Government. He also leads a research group based in Germany at the . His research focuses on European politics and the comparative study of democracy. He is the author of four books, including (2018), co-authored with Steven Levitsky, a New York Times best-seller and described by The Economist magazine as "the most important book of the Trump era." The book has been translated into thirty languages. In 2023, he published (w/ Steve Levitsky), also a New York Times bestseller, that analyzes American democracy in comparative perspective. Prior to this, he authored (Cambridge University Press, 2017), an account of the historical rise of democracy in Europe as well as a book on European state-building entitled (Princeton University Press, 2006/2008), In 2023, Ziblatt was elected member of the American Academy for Arts and Sciences.
David French
October 30, 2024
4:30 p.m.–6:00 p.m.
Kresge Auditorium
is an author and columnist writing about law, culture, religion and armed conflict. He is currently writing a weekly newsletter for the New York Times. He is a former senior editor for the The Dispatch and a former senior writer for National Review.