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.

Mark Gilbert is a British citizen. He was educated at the University of Durham and the University of Wales, where he earned his doctorate in 1990. He has been professor of history at SAIS Europe, the Bologna Campus of the School for Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University, since 2012. In 2018, he was president of the international jury of the Cundill Prize (https://www.cundillprize.com/). He is currently writing a book, to be published by Penguin / Allen Lane, on the Birth of Democracy in Italy: A Political and Social History, 1943—54.

Event page: https://events.jhu.edu/form/HAHMGilbert