“A curious thing has happened within American culture,” Aziz Rana writes in Reclaiming Freedom. “The language of freedom has been claimed almost entirely by the political right.” Join Boston Review and Haymarket Books for a discussion of whether it can be reclaimed.

Freedom has a dual legacy. On the one hand, it stands for the great struggles long associated with the left, from abolition and anticolonialism to women’s and queer liberation. On the other hand, it has long been the watchword of an exclusionary right—playing a central role in the politics of neoliberalism and resurgent white nationalism. Rejecting this view of freedom as an exclusively right-wing concern, the latest issue of Boston Review, Reclaiming Freedom aims to reestablish freedom as a fundamental political value essential to any vision of a more just world.

For this online forum, Aziz Rana will be joined by several other contributors to chart the path toward a different politics of freedom.

Order a copy of Reclaiming Freedom: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2364-reclaiming-freedom

***Register through Ticket Tailor to receive a link to the live-streamed video on the day of the event. This event will also be recorded and captioning will be provided.***

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Speakers:

Aziz Rana is professor of law and government at Boston College. He is the author of The Two Faces of American Freedom and the forthcoming The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them.

Elisabeth R. Anker is Professor of American Studies and Political Science at the George Washington University. She is the author of multiple books, including Ugly Freedoms (2022) and Orgies of Feeling: Melodrama and the Politics of Freedom (2014).

William Clare Roberts is Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University. His most recent book is Marx’s Inferno (2017), and he is currently working on a afterword to a new translation of Capital, Volume One.

Mark Paul is an assistant professor at the Bloustein School of Planning & Public Policy in Rutgers University. His research interests include environmental justice and the consequences of income inequality.

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This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books and Boston Review. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and programming work.