Politics of the Past and Politics of the Future
M. Gessen is a journalist and bestselling author who has covered political subjects from Russia, autocracy, L.G.B.T. rights, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump. Gessen's latest book is Surviving Autocracy, a bracing overview of the calamitous trajectory of American democracy under the Trump administration. As The New York Times Book Review noted in their review, “When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen.” Their understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. Winner of the National Book Award, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy, against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all. Gessen’s other books include the New York Times bestseller, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, and Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot. An opinion writer at The New York Times, Gessen is the first Distinguished Professor at Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and is a founder of the Russian Independent Media Archive, a digital archive focused on preserving the last two decades of independent Russian journalism. They live in New York City.
Gessen's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies, the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights, and the Women and Leadership Alliance at CMC.
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