Through the winter and spring of this year, the library’s Public Humanities Initiative launched a new programmatic effort to pursue the concept of justice in a sustained way through the end of 2025. This annual public humanities theme arose from special programs devoted to social justice and its prospects in our time, such as the panel discussion on “History and Restorative Justice in Princeton” and the Feminist Book Discussion Group. Others like the Catherine Project Book Group (exploring foundational texts pertaining to philosophical accounts of justice), Douglass Day 2025, or Brandon Terry’s 2025 MLKJ Lecture emerged through the year, as certain themes arose from the chosen topic and persisted with urgency as points of focus. Meanwhile a series of author events, including those on Julian Zelizer’s “In Defense of Partisanship,” Serene Khader‘s “Faux Feminism,” Brianna Nofil‘s “The Migrant’s Jail” or Musa al-Gharbi‘s “We Have Never Been Woke,” brought a range of perspectives to issues related to the pursuit of justice and deepened the focus through the expertise of these authoritative speakers, their partners in conversation and the questions posed by members of the public.
Through the summer, our adult programming department has been planning further contributions to this annual humanities programming theme, and many of these upcoming events have now been posted on the library’s public calendar. In particular, the Public Humanities Author Series continues this fall with new events starting in September, when Laurence Ralph joins Peniel Joseph for a discussion of his “Freedom Season: How 1963 Transformed America’s Civil Rights Revolution,” which makes the case that 1963 was a pivotal year in the struggle for Black freedom.
Next, in October, Cass Sunstein introduces his most forthcoming title, “On Liberalism,” which advances a defense of liberalism at a time when its prospects have perhaps never been more in doubt. Meanwhile Rhacel Salazar Parreñas presents “The Trafficker Next Door,” exploring (per the publisher) “uncomfortable truths about everyday household arrangements” and issuing “calls for justice and fair treatment for all workers.” Shamus Khan returns to the library on Oct. 28 for a conversation with Eric Heinze, whose “Coming Clean” explores the cultural politics of “wokeness” through introspection on the political left’s deficiencies with respect to its own avowed ideals.
In November Karida L. Brown, also joined by Laurence Ralph, presents her new book “The Battle for the Black Mind,” which traces the history of segregated schooling up to the present, while “offer[ing] powerful insight into how Black people have always fought to create environments where Black minds could thrive,” and Fara Dabhoiwala, together with Jane Manners, provides insights into his new book, “What is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea,” a thorough examination of the global context for free speech and and a thoughtful unmasking of the power dynamics haunting this ideal.
Each of these events contributes in its own way to the Public Humanities Initiative’s sustained investigation of justice, but by following the whole series and reviewing the recordings linked above or available on the library’s YouTube channel, community members may find surprising and serendipitous connections among the presentations, deepen their understanding of this topic or even find motivation to become more involved in the pursuit of justice in our community.