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Discussions on the future and fate of higher education are more important than ever. Amid the controversies, we see attacks on academic freedom, concerns about rising costs, the end of affirmative action programs, questions about fair treatment of contingent faculty, and the undermining of scientific inquiry. Progressive institutions appear particularly at risk, buffeted by political attacks and self-doubts about privilege and responsibility.

Please join us for a conversation on this timely topic with Nancy Cantor, Chancellor of Rutgers University – Newark and incoming President of Hunter University, and Andrew Delbanco, Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies at Columbia University, moderated by Donna E. Shalala, Interim President of The New School.

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The William Phillips Lecture was established in 2006 to further the legacy of William Phillips, co-founder of Partisan Review, a journal committed to freedom of thought in literature, to creative expression, and to serious, open debate. Launched in 1934, Partisan Review functioned as a vital literary bridge between the United States and Europe, as its authors included major progressive thinkers and writers from both sides of the Atlantic, such as Thomas Mann, Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, George Orwell, Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, Czesław Miłosz, William Styron, Philip Roth, and Susan Sonntag. The annual lecture series was founded by the late Edith Kurzweil, an editor of Partisan Review, a graduate of The New School for Social Research (PhD, Sociology), and William Phillips’ wife.