Affirmative action, New York's Armory Show and the presidency of Woodrow Wilson are some of the topics at the New-York Historical Society's coming season of the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Distinguished Speakers Series, which begins this fall.
Highlights include Randall L. Kennedy, the Harvard law professor, author and former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, discussing the history of affirmative action and its continued importance in “The Supreme Court and Affirmative Action†on Oct. 3. Marilyn S. Kushner and Kimberly Orcutt, curators at the society, will look at the 1913 Armory Show on Oct. 24. Their talk is presented in connection with the Historical Society's major fall exhibition “The Armory Show at 100: Modern Art and Revolution,†from Oct. 11 to Feb. 23.
Other highlights are Russell Shorto's examination of the Dutch influence on New York City in “From Amsterdam to New Amsterdam†on Oct. 28 and A. Scott Berg's look at the influence of Woodrow Wilson, for the President Bill Clinton Lecture in American History on Nov. 4. Robert A. Caro will address “The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power†at the Harold and Ruth Newman Lecture in American History on Nov. 21.
On Feb. 15 the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Levering Lewis and Khalil Gibran Muhammad, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, will hold a conversation on W.E.B. Du Bois. The lectures take place at the New-York Historical Society. More information is available here or at (212) 485-9268.
