What if you uncovered a Nazi paper trail that revealed your father to be a man very different from the quiet, introspective dad you knew… or thought you knew? Growing up, author Mel Laytner saw his father as a quintessential Type B: passive and conventional. As he uncovered documents the Nazis didn’t burn, however, another […]

Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who found himself at the center of a firestorm for his decision to report the infamous phone call that led to President Donald Trump’s impeachment, will tell his personal story in this Museum program moderated by CNN Senior Global Affairs Analyst Bianna Golodryga. Vindman was born to Jewish […]

How are Black-Indigenous youth working to advance social justice? This Indigenous Peoples’ Day program highlights youth of blended Black and Native heritage who use art, activism, and policy to advance Black and Indigenous solidarity and affect positive change in their communities.

Authors Thomas Dean, Maya Lang, and Andrew Altshul discuss the theme of searching for safety in an intimate Livestream conversation open to the public. Interactive Q&A with audience participation.

Fania Wedro was born Fania Hellman in Koretz, Poland on August 25, 1927. When she was fourteen years old, the Nazis took away her father and the other men living in the village. Fania then spent six months in a work ghetto in Koretz, where she escaped two mass killings by the Nazis. After escaping […]

In this lecture, Michael Harris will discuss the Battle of Germantown. Despite a complicated plan of attack, George Washington’s Continental Army seemed on the verge of victory at Germantown, until decisions at the highest levels of the army took that promised victory away.

Bob O’Shea was a scrappy kid from New Jersey. His grandmother worked as a maid at the Waldorf Astoria in midtown Manhattan, his father was a New York City cop and Bob was accepted to Fordham University on a track and field scholarship. O’Shea’s success on Wall Street is the epitome of the American dream. […]

Science enthusiasts from all walks of life are invited to attend this public series of short, interactive talks from award-winning early-career UK scientists. These young researchers are at the frontlines of research that will shape the future of our lives over the next century. Can we use light to evoke chemical reactions? Are magnetic molecules […]

The chief endowment officers at foundations, family offices, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds are the leaders in the world of finance. They marshal trillions of dollars on behalf of their institutions and influence how capital flows throughout the world. But these elite investors live outside of the public eye. Across the entire investment industry, […]

Join top architects and urban thinkers for a wide-ranging discussion on China’s cities of the future. For decades, China’s planners focused on tearing down the old, and building the new in order to fuel the nation’s rapid development. Glistening cities rose, while psychological and social costs took a back seat. Today, as China struts more […]

In recorded presentations by two renowned Mexican families, the museum showcases two traditions central to Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos): the art of making figures from sugar and papier-mâché. These two presentations will take place in Spanish. “The Sweet Story of Alfeñique” follows matriarch Margarita Mondragón as she creates skulls and animals, […]

In this lecture, Jinny Berten will consider the relationship between George Washington and William Lee, the last three days of Washington’s life, Washington’s changing views on slavery and the concerns the Mount Vernon enslaved had with Washington’s last will and testament.

Completed in 1928, at the height of the Roaring Twenties, the Barbizon Hotel was designed as a luxurious safe haven for the “Modern Woman” hoping for a career in the arts. Over time, it became the place to stay for any ambitious young woman hoping for fame and fortune. In her new book The Barbizon: […]

Webinar with Michael Mauboussin. Most investment books try to assess the attractiveness of a stock price by estimating the value of the company. Expectations Investing, by Michael Mauboussin and Alfred Rappaport, provides a powerful and insightful alternative to identifying gaps between price and value. The authors suggest that an investor start with a known quantity, […]

Love stories during the Holocaust are as inspiring as they are remarkable. In photographer Max Hirshfeld’s new book Sweet Noise: Love in Wartime, he offers an intimate look at one of these stories through powerful photographs, a series of emotional love letters between his parents, and the narrative of a son’s pilgrimage exploring his origins. […]

Online program. In November 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish refugee living in Paris, walked into his city’s German Embassy and assassinated Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath. Grynszpan was just seventeen years old. His actions would later be used as justification for Kristallnacht, the violent antisemitic pogrom which took place on November 9 and 10, 1938. […]

Authors Jotham Burrello, Sara Schaff, and Amy Shearn are featured in this salon, with the theme of "The Haves & Have Nots." Interactive Q&A with audience participation.

In this lecture, Nina Sankovitch will present the intimate connections between leading families of the American Revolution—the Hancock, Quincy, and Adams families—and explore the role played by such figures as John Hancock, John Adams and Abigail Smith (Adams), Josiah Quincy Junior and Dorothy Quincy (Hancock) in sparking the flames of dissent and rebellion that would […]

Jill Pauly was born Gisella Berg on May 1, 1933 in Cologne, Germany to a close, religious Jewish family. Due to the restrictions put in place by the Nazis shortly before she was born, Jill was unable to play outside with other children, and found herself in a life of displacement. Her childhood home was […]

Hosted by Fraunces Tavern Museum and Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society. In 1776, the US vessel Andrew Doria sailed to the Dutch island of Sint Eustatius carrying a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Upon its arrival, the island's governor provided a formal cannon salute to the ship's patriot flag, marking the first acknowledgement of the […]

Permission, appropriation or trespassing – the tricky terrain of 2 Black Dramaturgs in the current “We See You” performance landscape told through personal case studies, observations, rants, riffs and realizations. Melanie George and Talvin Wilks, friends, colleagues, and confidantes, will talk their way through the current cultural moment from their vantage points as Dramaturgs While […]

What is driving President Xi Jinping’s moves to re-centralize control over China’s economy and society? On the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, the Leninist doctrine that underpins its history is reemerging to challenge capitalist-style, market reforms. Join us for this virtual discussion as Harvard political scientist Tony Saich, author of From Rebel to […]

As the founder of financial futures and initiator of Globex, the world’s first global electronic trading system, Leo Melamed revolutionized the finance industry. Join us for a conversation with this commodities pioneer moderated by CNBC Senior Markets Correspondent Bob Pisani.

Caryl Stern, the renowned human rights activist, is the third generation of women in her family whose lives were shaped by the Holocaust. Her grandmother, Mignon Langnas, was a nurse in Vienna when the Nazis invaded. Facing an agonizing decision, she sent her two young children on a ship to the US, opting to stay […]

Brian Bowen retired as president of Hanscomb Inc. in 2000, after a long career in the construction industries of England, Canada, and the United States. In a second career as a Professor of Practice in the College of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Bowen developed a course that became the basis of his […]

Two design competitions determined the direction of the master plan at Ground Zero and the concept and position of the 9/11 memorial and museum. Ultimately the memorial, museum, and landscaped plaza encompassed eight of the sixteen acres of the World Trade Center site. The very public and political process of creating the cultural institutions on […]

Webinar. During the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, our financial infrastructure failed. Govern­ments bailed out the very institutions that let the economy down. This episode spurred a serious rethink of our financial system. Does it make any sense that it takes two days to settle a stock transaction? Why do retailers, operating on razor thin […]

In this lecture, Martha Saxton provides a sketch of the challenging life of Mary Ball Washington, who raised George and his four siblings largely alone—as well as her unfair treatment at the hands of his biographers. This lecture will take place via Zoom.

Rachel Cowan was a civil rights activist, community organizer, the first female Jew by choice ordained as a Rabbi, and a beloved and influential mindfulness teacher. After she was diagnosed with aggressive brain cancer, her years of mindfulness practice enabled her to model living well while dying. Join the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the Institute […]

Season finale of Pen Parentis. Tonight, the theme is #DadsWhoWrite. The evening features the authors Rion Amilcar Scott, David Mura and David Ebenbach.

Before the 1800s, Hanukkah was a minor holiday to most Jews. However, the status of the holiday began to change after the Civil War, when Rabbi Max Lilienthal created Hanukkah events for children at his synagogue. Soon, these types of events were adopted nationwide. In the twentieth century, Jews began expanding the celebration of the […]

On November 30 and December 8, 1941, approximately 26,000 Jews were murdered in the Rumbula Forest outside Riga, Latvia. Along with the massacre at Babyn Yar, the Rumbula Massacre represents one of the largest two-day Nazi mass shootings. Only three people who arrived at the Rumbula killing site survived the Holocaust. 80 years after the […]

In this program, industry leaders involved in different aspects of taking companies public will discuss the role of SPACs as an increasingly popular alternative to the more traditional IPO.

Person Place Thing is an interview show based on this idea: people are particularly engaging when they speak not directly about themselves but about something they care about. Guests talk about one person, one place, and one thing that are important to them. The result? Surprising stories from great speakers. Host Randy Cohen will be […]

In her new book The Architectural Models of Theodore Conrad, historian and curator Teresa Fankhänel offers an alternative history of American modern architecture, highlighting the often-overlooked influence of architectural models and their makers. Fankhänel focuses on the work of Theodore Conrad (1910-1994), the most prominent and prolific American architectural model-maker of the 20th century, whose […]

China Institute invites you to join our first ever ONE READ project! Read the book with our community, meet the author, and deepen your understanding of modern China by examining the world behind Liang Hong’s literary sensation, China in One Village. The book travels with the author to her ancestral village in landlocked Henan Province. […]

Hannah Arendt was many things during her life: an author, a journalist, a philosopher, and a theorist. She was one of the most influential and controversial Jewish figures of her time. Her works include The Human Condition and Eichmann in Jerusalem. This year is the 70th anniversary of her landmark book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, […]

Webinar. Lunchtime program with Robin Wigglesworth, the Financial Times's global finance correspondent and author of Trillions, as he discusses the incredible true story of the iconoclastic geeks who defied conventional wisdom and endured Wall Street's scorn to launch the index fund revolution, democratizing investing and saving hundreds of billions of dollars in fees. Fifty years […]

South Miami Beach is a tiny gem of Art Deco architecture, warm sun, and cool breezes. It was also the winter destination of choice for Jewish seniors during the 1970s and 80s, including many Holocaust survivors. During the area’s golden age, upwards of 20,000 “snowbirds” (those who fly south for the winter to escape the […]

In 1944, many Americans were opposed to taking in European refugees who had been displaced by World War II. In the midst of this unwelcoming climate, 982 refugees, many of whom were Jewish, arrived in Oswego, New York. Here, they were housed at Fort Ontario, the United States’ only refugee camp during the war. In […]

In 2018, Poland’s nationalist government enacted a law which criminalized speech that holds Poland responsible for Nazi crimes. Forced by international pressure to withdraw the criminal provisions, nationalists promised instead to use civil litigation to achieve their aims. In 2021, for the first time, the law was used to target Holocaust scholars in civil court. […]

What is China’s goal in making global development investments? Despite the fact that the U.S. declined to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, are U.S. investors still welcome in AIIB projects? Is there room for U.S.-China collaboration around global development and governance in the financial arena? Jin Liqun, President of the AIIB and one of […]

1912 marked an important turning point in Chinese history, when the imperial period that lasted for more than 2000 years uninterrupted came to a crashing end and a new republic, the first of its kind in China, came into being. On January 1, 1912, a band-new provisional government was established and seated in Nanjing with […]

Nate Leipciger was born to a Jewish family in Chorzów, Poland in 1928. When he was eleven years old, the Nazis invaded, and Nate and his family spent the next three years living in ghettos. The family was later deported to Auschwitz, where Nate was separated from his mother and sister. He would never see […]

Join China expert and diplomat Nicholas Platt, who will share the story of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 1973 trip to China at Richard Nixon’s behest. Platt, who was the Foreign Service Control Officer for that historic visit, handled the negotiations—with plenty of challenges on both the American and the Chinese sides.

In this lecture, Desmarais will discuss recent discoveries about the Count de Rochambeau’s army that counter popular assumptions—focusing primarily on the recently published diary of the Count de Lauberdière, which includes details that are not covered in any other French diaries. Serving as an aide-de-camp on General Rochambeau’s staff, the young and well-educated Lauberdière provided […]

Online discussion. The pandemic has highlighted health inequities that disproportionately impact vulnerable populations by creating and exacerbating poverty and leading to decreased life expectancy throughout the world. Join the Rev. Phillip Jackson as he speaks to leaders and experts, exploring how people of faith can advocate for those most affected by these inequities.

During the last year of her life, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sat down with Moment editor-in-chief Nadine Epstein to discuss the Jewish women she found inspiring. In Epstein’s new intergenerational book RBG’s Brave and Brilliant Women: 33 Jewish Women to Inspire Everyone, she profiles the women Ginsburg identified and reflects on each of […]

Between 1880 and 1930, Latin America experienced its largest influx of Jewish immigration. These immigrants were fleeing the poverty and persecution that affected them in Europe. During the lead up to WWII, more Jewish immigrants arrived to escape the rise of the Nazi regime. This wave of immigrants often came to the region on tourist […]

The Skyscraper Museum returns to its WORLD VIEW lecture series with a coda on the construction of the Merdeka 118 Tower in Kuala Lumpur. In December 2021, Merdeka 118 lifted its symbolic spire into place and topped out at its full height of 2,227 ft. or 679 meters to surpass the 632-meter Shanghai Tower and […]

Wednesday Webinar. Eight-part series on retirement planning. These programs are designed to introduce you to the many possible sources of retirement income and resources, including social security, medicare, pension options including 401(k)s, individual retirement accounts and annuities, as well as the complex issues faced when planning for loved ones with wills and/or trusts. Today: The […]

In 1936, the German-American Bund, a pro-Nazi group, was formed in the United States to advocate for policies beneficial to Germany. The Bund was very active throughout the latter half of the 1930s, organizing rallies and marches, including a rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939. One of the Bund’s most notable activities was running […]

China boasts of a 5000-year civilization, but for much of the past few millenniums, the country had been shrouded in mystery due in large part to its lack of communication with the rest of the world. The scarcity of translations of Chinese books, classic or otherwise, was a contributing factor to the impasse as well. […]

In Architecture Unbound noted architecture critic JOSEPH GIOVANNINI traces our current architecture landscape to the disruptive scientific advances and transgressive and progressive art movements that roiled Europe before and after World War I, and then to the social unrest and cultural disruptions of the 1960s. Cumulative shifts across disciplines and social systems established fertile new […]

Wednesday Webinar. Eight-part series on retirement planning. These programs are designed to introduce you to the many possible sources of retirement income and resources, including social security, medicare, pension options including 401(k)s, individual retirement accounts and annuities, as well as the complex issues faced when planning for loved ones with wills and/or trusts. Today: Understanding […]

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many Jewish writers turned to pen and paper to reckon with the enormity of their loss. The stories they wrote—both fiction and nonfiction—bring to life the darkest moments of human history at the same time as they remind us of the human capacity for renewal and regeneration. On International […]

“Long live Chairman Mao” was the first English language sentence the Lijia Zhang ever learned. “Foreign language is a tool of class struggle” was the second. On January 27, the author of Socialism is Great and Lotus, will take us back in time to the missile factory where she worked in the early 1980s, and […]