Guest Lecturer David Fischer

As part of James Farmer Visiting Professor Ralph Thaxton’s course on human rights, eminent history scholar Professor David Fischer of Brandeis University delivered a public presentation on November 13 entitled, “Liberty and Freedom: Visions of a Free America.”

In his presentation Dr. Fischer addressed the issue of how Americans through time have conceptualized “liberty” and “freedom” - - two words that he contends embody quite different concepts. As he explains, “The answers we see in images and symbols are different from what we read in treatises and texts. We see liberty and freedom as deeply felt traditions, customs, and folkways, inherited from the distant past, changing through time, and always contested in every generation.”