Edith Bleich Lecture Series

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Edith Bleich Lecture Series | 2025-2026

Please join the Center for the Humanities at the upcoming Edith Bleich Lecture Series featuring Professor Gary Gerstle who will present on the topic, "America’s Authoritarian Turn." This event is free and open to the public and marks the 100th anniversary since Edith Bleich began her studies at the University of Miami.

This lecture was originally scheduled for Thursday, February 26. Due to severe winter weather that has canceled or delayed travel, we have postponed this Bleich Lecture until Tuesday, April 7, 2026 at 5:00pm. RSVP information will be updated here by or before Thursday, February 26. 

Gary Gerstle will look beyond the figure of Donald Trump to inquire into the roots of America’s authoritarian turn. His lecture will dissect how a neoliberal political order widened economic inequality, stirred ethnoracial resentments, and raised doubts about the capacity of liberal democratic regimes to fix what had gone wrong. Gerstle will explore why the unraveling of this political order in the 2010s energized the authoritarian right more than the democratic left and will conclude with some thoughts about where Americans might look for democratic renewal.

Gary Gerstle is Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Cambridge. Gerstle received his BA from Brown University and his MA and PhD from Harvard University. He is the author, editor, and coeditor of more than ten books.  He is currently the Joy Foundation Fellow at the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, where he is working on a new book, Politics in Our Time: Authoritarian Peril and Democratic Hope in the Twenty-First Century.  He resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

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ABOVE: Bleich Lecture (February 2025), from left to right: Sydney Shamblin Anderson (UGrow Fellow); Tim Martin (PhD Candidate in History); Mihoko Suzuko (Professor Emerita in English and Founding Director of the Center, 2009-2018); Hugh Thomas (Professor of History and Director of the Center, 2018-2023); Stuart Blumin (Professor Emeritus of History, Cornell University and Donor of the Edith Bleich Lecture Series); Phil Harling (Professor of History and Director of the Center); Sara McDougall, (featured Professor for Edith Bleich Lecture Series, 2024-2025); Atsar Williams (Student Assistant in Marketing and Graphic Design); Christina Larson (Assistant Director); Elizabeth S Hernandez (Office Manager); Charlie Bartlett (Lecturer, Department of Classics).