Vision Series Lecture by Professor Solon Simmons

Monday, October 14, 2013 7:15 PM EDT
Van Metre Hall (formerly Founders Hall), Auditorium

Simmons will present the core arguments from his recent book, The Eclipse of Equality: Arguing America on Meet the Press, which tells the story of the atrophy in post World War II America of one of the canonical categories of the moral imagination, equality. In this book, Solon explores the progressive articulation of the American idea as the core values freedom and tolerance find ready advocates and rhetorical supports in postwar America, while equality thought of in non-ascriptive and universal terms stagnates and falls out of our collective vocabulary. The story is not a happy one. Americans now confront one another over a dysfunctional divide, lacking the intellectual tools they need to confront their most dire social problems.