New Lecture Series for the Public: "Hitler and Stalin Today"

The first lecture in a ten-lecture series on Hitler and Stalin today.

Today, I am publicly releasing the first lecture of a ten-lecture course I taught at the University of Toronto this past year. The course is called “Hitler and Stalin Today.” Consider this a public resource for students, researchers, and anyone interested in understanding the relationship between history and contemporary democracy.

Throughout the ten lectures, I examine the Nazi and Soviet responses to the new globalized world they shared. The course begins with the colonial background that made totalitarianism possible, and which remains an essential element of our politics now. Their ideologies are described as worldviews and as practical politics, with an emphasis on the reasons for their appeal. Attention to their policies of mass killing, essential events of twentieth-century history, instructs us about how “it” can happen here. The study of dissident thought helps us to see connections between historical predicaments and our own, and instructs us about possible reactions as individuals and as citizens. Ultimately, the course asks what we have learned from the twentieth century, and what we should.

The first lecture (video above) is titled “What is history?” We speak often about history, but we are careless with the past. When we choose not to know what has happened before, we are also choosing not to influence what will happen after. If we don’t care about history, we find ourselves in an eternal present, denied any sort of imagination about the future, and nurtured on lies about a past in which we were innocent. History does not mean these misleading tales; it means a search for knowledge, using a certain set of tools; it means a process that enriches and humanizes, one that allows us to name things by their proper names.

There are two readings to go along with this lecture:

Hope you enjoy this brand new lecture series! Every Wednesday, I will release a new lecture, paired with readings.