About the event

The Irving Howe Memorial Lecture

From “Make America Great Again” to worldwide religious fundamentalism, reactionary ideology is a powerful yet underestimated force in today’s politics. As Mark Lilla explores in his timely talk, nostalgia for a lost golden age has been transformed into a potent and sometimes deadly force. Lilla, professor of humanities at Columbia University, is the author of The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction and The Stillborn God: Politics, Religion, and the Modern West, among other books.

Irving Howe (1920-1993) graduated from City College New York in 1940 and become a founder of Democratic Socialists of America; he founded Dissent magazine and was considered one of the country's most influential literary critics until his death. This annual lecture, endowed in his honor, focuses on the subjects closest to Irving Howe’s heart, including politics, Yiddish and Jewish culture, immigrant history and the modern literary imagination.

Free, Reservations Required. To reserve seats for this lecture, click here.

Cosponsored by Public Programs at the Graduate Center, CUNY

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