President’s Distinguished Lecture

Writer Jill Lepore delivers the fourth annual President’s Distinguished Lecture.

How has America lived up to its founders’ grandest visions? That is the central question historian and author Jill Lepore explores in her latest book, These Truths: A History of the United States.

Lepore, who serves as the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University, delivered the fourth annual President’s Distinguished Lecture at Conn in April.

“At a moment when we are lost in an ever vanishing present, it’s useful to pull out the whole long timeline of American history and try to figure out where we stand, and maybe where we want to head,” said Lepore, also a staff writer for The New Yorker.

Lepore’s articles have also appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs and The Journal of American History. Her book The Secret History of Wonder Woman won the 2015 American History Book Prize from the New York Historical Society. She has twice been named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

“She is that rare kind of scholar who is as committed to addressing the general public as she is to speaking to fellow historians,” President Katherine Bergeron said. “And she has staked her career on finding, and telling, the stories of people whose histories have been forgotten or ignored.”

The President’s Distinguished Lecture Series was initiated in 2016, and brings notable figures from a variety of fields and backgrounds to Connecticut College each year. The guests are invited to deliver a public presentation to an audience of the College and local communities, and then engage in informal discussions and meetings with students, faculty and staff.