In this conversation, part of a series of events marking the IWM’s 40th anniversary in 2022, Timothy Snyder and Yuval Noah Harari will discuss what lessons we should take from the past four decades and what will determine the course of the years to come.
Topics will include techno-optimism and -pessimism, the role of ideas in politics, the continuing relevance of history to geopolitics, the failure and the success of predictions from the past, the intellectual legacies of the late twentieth century, and the war in Ukraine and is possible consequences for coming decades.
Yuval Noah Harari is Professor at the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of bestsellers Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Harari has written for publications such as The Guardian, Financial Times, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Economist and Nature magazine.
Timothy Snyder is the Levin Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University and IWM Permanent Fellow. His fifteen books, which include The Road to Unfreedom, On Tyranny, Bloodlands and Black Earth, have been translated into more than forty languages and have received a similar number of awards. He holds state orders and honorary doctorates and has appeared in documentaries, on network television, and in major films.
The conversation will be moderated by IWM Permanent Fellow Ivan Krastev.
A livestream will be available here: https://youtu.be/t6kHtg2oOwg