This week, we will welcome keynote speaker M. Gessen to campus to speak about “Censorship, Silence and Resistance” as part of The Press in Times of Peril series sponsored by the Center for Global Studies. The talk will be held in Maxey Auditorium on Thursday, Jan. 30, at 7 p.m. and is open to the public. (Flyer attached.)
Gessen lived through the rise of Vladimir Putin’s regime in Moscow, before moving to New York, where they’ve been living since 2013. Their experience as a journalist in autocratic Russia has shaped their understanding and analysis of current U.S. politics. Gessen currently works as an opinion columnist for the The New York Times and won a George Polk Award for their opinion writing in 2024.
Gessen is also an award-winning author with 11 titles, including “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia” (Riverhead Books, 2017), which won a National Book Award, and the New York Times bestselling “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin” (Riverhead Books, 2012).
More recently, Gessen has received attention for their 2020 book “Surviving Autocracy” (Riverhead Books), which studies the trajectory of American democracy under the Trump administration, from the corrosion of the media to changing cultural norms. This book was the end product of a viral essay Gessen wrote in November 2016.
In a book review for The New York Times, Jennifer Szalai wrote, “When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen.”
The Press in Times of Peril series is sponsored by the Center for Global Studies at Whitman. It aims to explore the role of journalism in understanding and addressing the systems that connect and divide the world. This keynote event in the series is highly recommended for all Whitman students, especially those interested in journalism.
