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 […]

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 […]

Elly Gotz was born in 1928 in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania. When he was 13 years old, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union and Elly and his family were forced into a ghetto. When the ghetto was later liquidated, Elly was transported to the Dachau concentration camp, where he labored in an underground factory for a […]

Is design art? In the hands of Han Feng, it sure is. The Hangzhou-born clothing designer first brought her fashion work into the performing arts with costumes for Anthony Minghella’s Madame Butterfly at the English National Opera and the Met Opera. Her bespoke couture designs meld Chinese motifs and craftmanship with a bold, modern sensibility. […]

Online discussion. Join Dr. Catherine Meeks, Executive Director of the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing and the Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers, Canon for Evangelism and Reconciliation for the Most Rev. Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church. This discussion, part of Trinity’s continuing series on Reconciliation as an agent of change, will explore […]

We are in a time of enormous risk. Economic growth is anemic, and political risk to the capital markets is on the rise. In the United States, a generation of white-collar baby boomers is heading into retirement with insufficient assets in their 401(k) programs, and industrial workers are stuck with materially underfunded pension plans. Against […]

Graphic novels have long been emerging as a way to tell difficult and often traumatic stories. Since the late 1970s, they have also been a medium for telling stories about the Holocaust. From true stories to fictional ones, graphic novels are used to tell all kinds of stories about this time. Recently, authors and illustrators […]

With the 2022 Winter Olympics coming up, China is very much in the global spotlight. What image does the rising power want to project to the world? In her compelling new book, The World According to China, Elizabeth Economy argues that Chinese President Xi Jinping has bold ambitions to transform the international system. Join us […]

The Museum’s director, Carol Willis, will offer a gallery tour of SUPERTALL 2021 that surveys 58 supertalls worldwide and highlights a dozen recently completed towers that represent some of the most stunning new forms and innovative approaches to structural engineering around the world today.

Abraham H. Foxman is one of the nation’s preeminent voices against antisemitism and hate. Join the Museum for a conversation with Foxman about his personal background, his life’s work, and his outlook on antisemitism today, moderated by Newsweek Deputy Opinion Editor Batya Ungar-Sargon. Born in Poland in 1940, Foxman survived the Holocaust when his parents […]

Led by Ben Wang, CI’s Senior Lecturer in Language and Humanities, this free virtual workshop is designed for K-12 educators (though we welcome all to attend) to help advance a deeper understanding of the uniqueness of Chinese classical poetry. In addition, by sharing his personal collection of the rare original couplet in calligraphy, Mr. Wang […]

A unique architectural art, the Chinese garden in its varied forms reveals a landscaped symphony of rocks, plants, pavilions, water and bridges orchestrated to vibrate with mystic symbolism. Visitors to Chinese gardens, both at home and abroad, seldom fail to marvel at the amazing artistry of the garden craftsmanship and the microcosm of the natural […]

In 1939, the Christian Front was formed in response to a call by Father Charles Edward Coughlin to oppose the Popular Front, a communist organization. The members of the Christian Front were American Catholics who supported a pro-Nazi agenda. In 1940, the FBI alleged that members of the group were trying to install what they […]

Leaders in the NFT (non-fungible token) market will discuss the current explosion and future opportunities within this crypto segment. NFTs are a family of crypto assets that hold ownership of unique data linked to a blockchain (e.g. Ethereum). They are typically packaged as digital collectibles, works of art, music, video game items, real estate of […]

Join ADL NY/NJ, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the New York Board of Rabbis, and 92Y for a conversation with Dr. Georgette Bennett, whose new book, Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By, tells the story of her efforts to get aid to Syrians during their Civil War. The massive $175 million humanitarian effort that she […]

Catherine Winner is Global Head of Stewardship at Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which led to over 100,000 Japanese Americans being forcibly removed from their homes to incarceration camps all over the Western United States. The executive order was influenced by prevalent anti-Asian prejudice. Since that time, Asian Americans have faced ongoing prejudice and hatred. During the […]

For more than forty years, George Washington was dedicated to an innovative and experimental course of farming at Mount Vernon, where he sought to demonstrate the public benefits of recent advances in British agriculture. In this lecture, Ragsdale will discuss these methods of British agricultural improvement and how they also shaped Washington’s management of enslaved […]

Join us as Tao Jiang, a scholar of Chinese philosophy, maps the life of China’s greatest sage and challenges conventional wisdom about Confucius as the ultimate architect of hierarchies and obedience. In a new book, Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China: Contestation of Humaneness, Justice, and Personal Freedom (Oxford University Press 2021), Jiang portrays […]

The history of speculative real estate development is an essential aspect of the histories of most cities, yet is a subject often ignored by academia. In her long awaited book Built Up, Patrice Derrington uncovers the roots of the global real estate industry in early modern London and seminal projects of private urban development such […]

Chinese investment in the Caribbean has soared in the past decade. State-Owned Enterprises, private firms and individuals have been investing in Special Economic Zones, natural resources, ports and passports. The Caribbean’s offshore financial markets have also played a significant role in enabling US investors to invest in Chinese firms and for Chinese firms to gain […]

China’s Qing court produced the largest group of surviving paintings of Chinese empresses, many of which were once used for ancestor worship in the private imperial collection. Join us as Daisy Yiyou Wang, who co-curated the 2019 Empresses exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum, explores an extraordinary portrait of Empress Xiaoxian, whose early death broke the […]

2022 marks the 530th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. Sponsored and dispatched by the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, Columbus led a fleet of three ships on August 3, 1492 to sail west to search for a direct sea route to reach Asia as an alternative […]

Book launch. Through striking and humorous figurative drawings, the iconic artist and musician David Byrne depicts daily life in intriguing ways. His illustrations, created while under quarantine, expand on the dingbat, a typographic ornament used to illuminate or break up blocks of text, to explore the nuances of life under lockdown and evoke the complex, […]

Launch. In these two newly published plays, Andy Bragen examines the intimacies and shadows that exist between parent and child. The evening will include readings of excerpts from both plays, followed by a Q&A with Andy and Playco’s Founding Producer Kate Loewald, and a book signing with Andy. The excerpts will feature performers from the […]

In June 1943, thirteen-year-old Thomas Geve and his mother were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Separated upon arrival, he was left to fend for himself in the men’s camp of Auschwitz I. During 22 harsh months in Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen, and Buchenwald, Thomas experienced the worst of Nazi cruelty—but he never gave up the will to live. Immediately […]

Twenty-two years after the original New York: An Illustrated History – first published in 1999 as a companion volume to the acclaimed 17 ½-hour PBS series New York: A Documentary Film, directed by Ric Burns and co-written with James Sanders – the dynamic duo is back. James Sanders will describe the project to revise and […]

First day of a poetry reading, online. Laure-Anne Bosselaar—award-winning poet, translator, and educator—reads Poets House Executive Director Emerita Lee Briccetti’s “Distance,” from Blue Guide, and her own poem “On a Bench by the Hudson,” from her collection A New Hunger.

Ernest Glaser was born Ernst Adolf Berthold Glaser on March 2, 1924 in Berlin. In 1939, his family left Germany to escape the Nazis and attempted to immigrate to the United ​States, but the family ended up in Shanghai, China. The Glasers thought that they would only be in Shanghai for a year at most, […]

Join Roger McCormack, Director of Education at The Bronx County Historical Society, to explore the significance of the Bronx in the American Revolution. This lecture will highlight the Battle of Pell’s Point, the impact of the war on ordinary Bronx farmers and inhabitants, and the general history of the war in the Bronx. This lecture […]

Written by the Chinese sage Lao Zi around 400 BC, Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching) is the most important scripture in Chinese culture. All the major schools of thoughts and religions in China, such as Confucianism, Taoism and Legalism, can trace their head-streams to the classic. According to UNESCO, Dao De Jing is the […]

In the century between 1847 and 1947, a handful of men and women changed the world. Many of them are well known—Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Kafka. Others have vanished from collective memory despite their enduring importance in our daily lives. Without Rosalind Franklin, for example, genetic science would look very different. Without Fritz Haber, there […]

Book launch.From the host of NPR’s Planet Money, the deeply-investigated story of how one visionary, dogged investor changed American finance forever. Before Bill Gross was known among investors as the Bond King, he was a gambler. In 1966, a fresh college grad, he went to Vegas armed with his net worth ($200) and a knack […]

Chicago and New York offered a handful of very different preconditions that influenced the way skyscrapers were designed and built in the two cities. Chicago’s murky soil forced engineers to carefully parse their structures into point supports and broad, snowshoe-like pads, which suggested structures above could be thought of as more skeletal frames than continuous […]

Led by Ben Wang, CI’s Senior Lecturer in Language and Humanities, this free virtual workshop is designed for K-12 educators (though we welcome all to attend) to help advance a deeper understanding of the uniqueness of Chinese classical poetry. In addition, by sharing his personal collection of the rare original couplet in calligraphy, Mr. Wang […]

A legendary historical figure in the Three Kingdom period (220-280), Zhuge Liang (181-234) is recognized as the most accomplished and admired military strategist of his era, first as the chancellor to Emperor Liu Bei of the state of Shu and later as the regent of the Kingdom. As a recognition of his contributions to Shu, […]

The second session of the Construction History series concentrates on Frames and the evolution of metal-cage construction in each city. Chicago has claimed the “invention” of steel-skeleton construction, which historians often call “the Chicago frame.” In New York, building codes and concerns about fire discouraged the use of skeleton frames until after 1892, so alternative, […]

Virtual event. Beatrice Nasi, who would come to be known as Doña Gracia, one of the richest women in the world, was born in 1510 in Portugal, where her forcibly-baptized, Crypto Jewish family fled from the nearby Spanish Inquisition. She worked to find a safe place for Jews, setting up an underground network to help […]

Book launch. During the coronavirus pandemic, a queer disabled woman bikes through a locked-down NYC for the ex-girlfriend who broke her heart. In pandemic-era NYC, Orpheus just manages to buy a bike before they sell out across the city. She takes to the streets looking for Eurydice, the first woman she fell in love with, […]

Moisés Ville was the epicenter of Argentine Jewish life during the 20th century. It was the first of many agricultural colonies founded by Jews who fled the Russian Empire’s persecution especially. When Javier Sinay discovered an article recounting twenty-two murders in Moisés Ville, written by his great-grandfather, a book was born. The discovery sent Sinay […]

April’s Stories Survive program features Ann Kliger Axelrod. Ann was born Elizabeth Benedikt on August 25, 1929 in Budapest, Hungary. On March 18, 1944, when Ann was 14 years old, the Nazis invaded Hungary and forced Jews to obey the degrading laws that were already in place in Germany. On April 5, the photo of […]

What was the biggest obstacle to China’s modernization as the Qing Dynasty collapsed? The Chinese language, according to Yale University Professor Jing Tsu. Back then, literacy was reserved for the elite few, and the system of calligraphy was far too complicated for the technological revolution that was sweeping the world. Join Professor Tsu as she […]

Military histories often focus on battles campaigns, overlooking the soldiers who fought them. Who were the red-coated soldiers who formed the ranks of the British army in the 1770s? In this talk, Don N. Hagist will investigate where British soldiers were from, what they did before joining the army, what motivated them to enlist, how […]

Audrey Schulman, author of Theory of Bastards, and Samantha Hunt, author of The Seas, will come together to discuss their new genre-bending works of literature as part of McNally Jackson and Europa Editions' series of conversations on literature from around the globe, Here & Away.

Do we need bookstores in the twenty-first century? If so, what makes a good one? In this beautifully written book, Jeff Deutsch--the director of Chicago's Seminary Co-op Bookstores, one of the finest bookstores in the world--pays loving tribute to one of our most important and endangered civic institutions. He considers how qualities like space, time, […]

A prominent writer of the 20th-century China, Ling Shuhua was active between the 1920s and the 1950s with a host of influential publications of short stories, essays, translations, and a memoir that firmly established her foremost position in modern Chinese literature. Since most of her short stories were first published in Western journals, her fame […]

More than 80% of Greek Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Among them were the father, sister, mother, and baby brother of Solomon Kofinas, a survivor from Athens and a leader of Kehilah Kedosha Janina (KKJ), New York’s Greek synagogue. Kofinas was born in 1936 in Athens. After the Nazi invasion of Greece in 1941, […]

Webinar. Is there an ideal portfolio of investment assets, one that perfectly balances risk and reward? In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio examines this question by profiling and interviewing ten of the most prominent figures in the finance world―Jack Bogle, Charley Ellis, Gene Fama, Marty Leibowitz, Harry Markowitz, Bob Merton, Myron Scholes, Bill Sharpe, Bob […]

The third session of the Construction History series focuses on Facades. Steel frames freed exterior walls from structural duties, allowing architects new freedom to develop facades that could respond to changing functional and aesthetic criteria. Developers' desire for efficiency and natural daylight led to thinner, lighter walls – "veneers" in the dismissive language of early […]

In a genre-defying book hailed as “exquisite” (The New York Times) and “spectacular” (The Times Literary Supplement), the best-selling memoirist and critic Daniel Mendelsohn explores the mysterious links between the randomness of the lives we lead and the artfulness of the stories we tell. Combining memoir, biography, history, and literary criticism, Three Rings weaves together […]

The fourth session of the Construction History series will examine the various dimensions in which the threat of fire affected skyscraper development. Claims of "fireproof building" were regularly disproved, often in cataclysmic fashion. Iron promised improvements over timber, but Chicago's Great Fire in 1871 revealed its vulnerability to collapse. Brick remained the only truly fireproof […]

Germany entered World War I on August 1, 1914 when the country declared war on Russia. 11 million German soldiers were mobilized, 100,000 of whom were Jewish. A number of these Jewish soldiers were honored for their service with the Iron Cross. In addition, many German Jews supported the war effort at home along with […]

Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢), one of China’s four great classic novels, tells the story of the rise and decline a wealthy imperial Chinese family, and by extension, the rise and decline of the Qing dynasty itself. The novel was adapted as an English-language Opera composed by Bright Sheng with libretto by Sheng and […]

In this lecture, Thomas Balcerski will discuss New York City as the capital of the nation, beginning in 1785 under the Articles of Confederation Congress. Despite debates over whether the capital should be relocated, the first Congress determined to meet there in March 1789, and the first inauguration of an American President happened there in […]