Events at Stanford
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20:53 Sep 15, 2021
Date: Tuesday, October 19, 2021. 1:00 PM. Location: Zoom "The Five Forms of Freedom" Timothy Snyder Richard C. Levin Professor of History, Yale University Freedom is the main idea of American political life, but no one knows what it means. The right treats it as the highest value, but defines it very narrowly, as the absence of hindrances. The left supports policies that are liberating, but concedes the idea of freedom to the right. Intellectuals propose that freedom will be brought by larger forces, such as economics or technology, which perverts the very idea of individual agency. Americans associate freedom with abstractions and phantoms, such the "free market," which means granting their own rights to entities that do not actually exist. Meanwhile, the digital world remodels thought and behavior towards conformism and polarization. What would it take to have a country of free speakers and free people? In this lecture, Timothy Snyder defines freedom as the capacity to choose among values, envision futures...