Second Annual Conference on Public Intellectuals at Harvard University

Randall Stephens

I've been working with Larry Friedman and Steve Whitfield on organizing the Second Annual Conference on Public Intellectuals at Harvard University, April 7-9, 2011. The program has shaped up nicely. Those who attended last year can attest to the lively discussions and debates generated by panels and keynotes. (We've asked all participants this year to pay a $25 fee. Friedman hopes to have funding options in the future, which might reduce or eliminate the fee.)

The 2011 conference will feature a variety of session that are sure to be productive. (See the program below.) Panels will address "Historians as Public Intellectuals," "The Cosmopolitan Generation of Intellectuals," "Religion and Public Intellectuals in America," and "Race, Gender, and Public Intellectuals." We anticipate roughly 20 participants and a number of non-presenters.

SECOND ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS, APRIL 7-9, 2011

Thursday, April 7

4:00 - 6:00: OPENING RECEPTION
Larry Friedman’s house, 335 Highland Avenue, Somerville (a 10-minute walk from the Davis Square stop on the Red Line T)

7:00 - 9:30pm: OPENING SEMINAR
James Hall penthouse seminar room, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge (please read James Kloppenberg’s Reading Obama: Dreams, Hopes, and the American Political Tradition in advance)

Introduction: Larry Friedman (Harvard University)

James Kloppenberg (Harvard University), “Reading Obama”

Comment: Dinesh Sharma (Institute for International and Cross-Cultural Research)

Friday, April 8

8:30 - 9:00am: Conference Chair: Anne Wyatt-Brown (University of Florida), welcome; coffee, tea, bagels, pastries, etc. provided.
James Hall 1305

9.00 - 12.00pm: Panel 1: HISTORIANS AS PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS
James Hall 1305

Chair: Jill Lepore (Harvard University)

Bertram Wyatt-Brown (Johns Hopkins University), “C. Vann Woodward and W.J. Cash: Similarities and Contrasts”

Joyce Antler (Brandeis University), “Gerda Lerner, Citizen-Scholar: ‘Why What We Do with History Matters’”

David D. Hall (Harvard University), “Perry Miller: Prophecy, Declension, and the Promise of America”

Ray Arsenault (University of South Florida), “The Freedom Writer: John Hope Franklin as a Public Intellectual”

12:00 - 1:15pm: Lunch on your own

1:15 - 4:30pm: Panel 2: THE COSMOPOLITAN GENERATION OF INTELLECTUALS
James Hall penthouse seminar room

Chair: David Starr (Brandeis University), with remarks on Solomon Schechter

Neil McLaughlin (McMaster University), “Fromm, Riesman, Nisbet and the Public Intellectuals: A Sociological Perspective”

Anke Schreiber (University of Chicago), “Erich Fromm as Public Intellectual”

David Andersen (Helena, Montana), “Three 1950s Classics: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Erik Erikson’s Childhood and Society, and Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism”

Jonathan B. Imber (Wellesley College), “Philip Rieff and Fellow Teachers”

4:30 - 5:30: Break

5:30 - 9:15pm: DINNER AND A CONVERSATION WITH GERDA LERNER AND ROBERT LIFTON
James Hall penthouse seminar room

6:30 - 6:50pm: Gerda Lerner (Madison, Wisconsin) on her life as a scholar and public intellectual (Skype video connection)

7:00 - 8:30pm: Robert J. Lifton (Harvard University) on his life and career

Saturday, April 9

8:30am: Coffee, tea, bagels, pastries
James Hall penthouse seminar room

9:00 - 12:00pm: Panel 3: RACE, GENDER, AND PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS
James Hall penthouse seminar room.

Chair: Roberta Wollons (University of Massachusetts Boston)

Mark West (University of North Carolina at Charlotte), “The Literary Roots of Theodore Roosevelt's Views on Women’s Rights”

Steve Whitfield (Brandeis University), “The Many Facets of Frank Tannenbaum”

Damon Freeman (University of Pennsylvania), “Kenneth B. Clark and the Just University”

Jim Clark (University of Kentucky), “‘In the South these Children Prophesy’: Robert Coles’ Documentary Argument”

12:00 - 1:30pm: Lunch on your own

1:30 - 4:30pm: Panel 4: RELIGION AND PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS IN AMERICA
James Hall penthouse seminar room

Chair: Jon Roberts (Boston University)

Maura Jane Farrelly (Brandeis University), “No Man is an Island: Catholic Clerics and the Perils of Public Intellectualism”

Bo Peery (George Washington University), “On ‘Doing Nothing’: Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr Debate the Merits of Taking Action in a Tumultuous World”

Randall J. Stephens (Eastern Nazarene College), “The Public Intellectual and the Public Anti-Intellectual: The Life of the Mind among Conservative Evangelicals”

Ronald E. Doel (Florida State University), “Religion, Science, and Cold War Visions: J. Lawrence Kulp and the Challenge of 20th Century Biography”

4:30 - 5:00pm: Break

5:00 - 6:30pm: CONCLUDING ROUNDTABLE WITH ALL CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS: “WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL?”
James Hall penthouse seminar room

For final discussion please read pre-circulated material: Lawrence J. Friedman, “Public Intellectuals on Philanthropy,” in Philanthropy in America: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, ed. Dwight F. Burlingame (ABC-CLIO, 2004), 390-402; David A. Hollinger, “How Wide the Circle of the ‘We’? American Intellectuals and the Problem of the Ethnos since World War II,” American Historical Review (April, 1993); and selection from, Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (Basic Books, 1987)

7:30pm: Dinner at Chang Sho, 1712 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138

All participants are asked to contribute $25 per person toward the cost of the conference.