Cold War Liberals

Brought to you by Hopkins at Home

June 15, 2020 - July 6, 2020 (4 weeks)
Mondays, 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EDT

The purpose of this short course is to introduce (or reintroduce) alumni to an important chapter in contemporary intellectual history. The course studies several writers and scholars whose work in the early Cold War was decisive for casting the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States as a struggle between democracy (and pluralism) and totalitarianism. All of the writers in the syllabus were politically committed to the cause of the West. Koestler was the front man for the Congress on Cultural Freedom; Orwell was an outspoken critic of “fellow travelers” in Britain; Schlesinger was a founder of Americans for Democratic Action. Berlin, a native Russian speaker, was less overtly political, but he was influential behind the scenes in official Washington and London. His articles for Foreign Affairs, especially “Political ideas in the Twentieth Century,” and his radio lectures on Freedom and Its Betrayal in 1951 were genuine instances of academic thinking that had an immediate impact on public debate and even public policy.

Further Reading: The best biographies of these four writers are:

Richard Aldous: Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian.

Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin: A Life.

D.J.Taylor: Orwell: A Life

Michael Scammell, Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual.