Michael Harrington Symposium at the Tamiment Library
November 15, 2007, 5:30 P.M – 8:30 P.M.
The Tamiment Library will be celebrating the life and work of Michael Harrington (1928-1989) and the official opening of the Michael Harrington papers at a November 15 symposium.
* Speakers will include: and Maurice Isserman, (Hamilton College) author of The Other American : The Life of Michael Harrington; Todd Gitlin (Columbia University) author of The Bulldozer and the Big Tent: Blind Republicans, Lame Democrats, and The Recovery of American Ideals; E.J. Dionne, Jr., (Georgetown University and syndicated columnist) author of They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives will Dominate the Next Political Era; and Norman Dorsen (Stokes Professor of Law and past president of the American Civil Liberties Union), editor of The Unpredictable Constitution.
* Michael Harrington (1928-1989), was the most prominent American socialist intellectual and political leader of the latter half of the twentieth century. He is best known as the author of The Other America: Poverty in the United States (1962) which was widely credited with setting the agenda for the War on Poverty during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.Harrington was also a founder and leader of Democratic Socialists of America, the U.S. affiliate to the Socialist International.
* The Harrington Papers now at the Tamiment Library include political and literary correspondence, manuscripts, including one for an unpublished book “Danger from the Right” (ca. 1964), and Harrington’s reading notebooks on the works of Marx, Hegel, Continental and ancient Greek philosophy, current economic and social conditions, political economy and theory, theology, and American and European literature. Of special interest are the biographical notebooks titled “Me - Boheme,” and “Village,” describing Harrington’s early years in New York.
The symposium will take place at the Tamiment Library, 10th floor Bobst Library on the New York University campus, 70 Washington Square South(West 4th Street between Greene and LaGuardia).
For additional information and directions, contact Tamiment Archivist Peter Filardo at [mailto]peter.filardo@nyu.edu[/mailto] or 212-998-2639.