Hope, Hopelessness & Human Rights in a Time of Autocracy
Rights and Humanities Annual Lecture featuring M. Gessen
The Rights and Humanities Annual Lecture is jointly sponsored by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI) and the Duke Human Rights Center @ FHI and is co-presented this year by the Provost’s Initiative on Pluralism, Free Inquiry, and Belonging. We are pleased to welcome M. Gessen as our 2026-2027 guest in this annual series.
One of our most trenchant observers of democracy, M. Gessen is the author of eleven books, including the National Book Award-winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia and The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. A Pulitzer Prize-winning Opinion writer at The New York Times, they have covered political subjects including Russia, L.G.B.T. rights, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and the rise of autocracy among others. Gessen’s essential book Surviving Autocracy is a bracing overview of the calamitous trajectory of American democracy under the Trump administration. They are currently at work on a biography of Hannah Arendt.
Free, but tickets are required. Limit 2 per person. Tickets at Duke Box Office
Co-sponsored by International Comparative Studies, Forum @ FHI, and Slavic and Eurasian Studies.
For more information, contact Natalie Pickett at the DHRC@FHI.
The Rights and Humanities Annual Lecture is jointly sponsored by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI) and the Duke Human Rights Center @ FHI and is co-presented this year by the Provost’s Initiative on Pluralism, Free Inquiry, and Belonging. We are pleased to welcome M. Gessen as our 2026-2027 guest in this annual series.
One of our most trenchant observers of democracy, M. Gessen is the author of eleven books, including the National Book Award-winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia and The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. A Pulitzer Prize-winning Opinion writer at The New York Times, they have covered political subjects including Russia, L.G.B.T. rights, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and the rise of autocracy among others. Gessen’s essential book Surviving Autocracy is a bracing overview of the calamitous trajectory of American democracy under the Trump administration. They are currently at work on a biography of Hannah Arendt.
Free, but tickets are required. Limit 2 per person. Tickets at Duke Box Office
Co-sponsored by International Comparative Studies, Forum @ FHI, and Slavic and Eurasian Studies.
For more information, contact Natalie Pickett at the DHRC@FHI.
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