Thomas Chatterton Williams has long been one of America’s most fearless writers on American culture and politics. His new book, Summer of Our Discontent, looks at how various existential crises plaguing the American liberal tradition came to a head during 2020, in which COVID, the George Floyd Protests, the presidency of Donald Trump, and social media paved the way for a paradigm shift in American politics and culture. In so doing, he makes a sharp and incisive case for a return to the liberal values that are the foundation of an open and vibrant society. He will be joined in conversation by Fairfield professor and National Book Award-winning author Phil Klay.
Thomas Chatterton Williams is the author of two highly acclaimed books: Self-Portrait in Black and White: Family, Fatherhood, and Rethinking Race, a TIME “Must Read” book, and Losing My Cool: Love, Literature, and a Black Man’s Escape from the Crowd. His third book, Summer of Our Discontent, out in August 2025, offers a timely meditation on freedom of thought, the tension between principle and partisanship, and the evolving boundaries of public discourse. Together, his works artfully blend memoir with cultural and philosophical critique, anchoring the personal within the political.
A visiting professor of the humanities and senior fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, Williams is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Previously a columnist at Harper’s and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, his work has also appeared in The New Yorker, London Review of Books, Le Monde, and numerous other publications, and has been collected in The Best American Essays and The Best American Travel Writing.
A 2022 Guggenheim fellow and recipient of the Berlin Prize from The American Academy in Berlin, he was also a 2019 New America national fellow and is currently a visiting fellow at AEI.
Thursday | 6 p.m.
September 4, 2025
Thomas Chatterton Williams
and the Summer of Our Discontent
Tuesday | 7:30 p.m.
September 30, 2025