Talking Points: Can Journalists and Clergy Offer Wisdom About Our Public Discourse?
TALKING POINTS: CAN JOURNALISTS AND CLERGY OFFER WISDOM ABOUT OUR PUBLIC DISCOURSE?
Part of JTS’s Opening Season
April 6, 7:00 p.m. ET
In Person and Online
America faces a breakdown of civil society, amid crises of trust in venerable social and legal institutions. What is the proper role of journalists and clergy—two professions entrusted with public speech—when speaking about such breakdowns so often contributes to them? Is there such a thing as a neutral observer, and is that even desirable? These and many related questions will be tackled in a dialogue between Dahlia Lithwick, one of the nation’s most experienced legal writers and thinkers, and Rabbi Jan Uhrbach, her partner in the study of the Jewish ethical tradition. JTS Vice Chancellor for Religious Life Rabbi Gordon Tucker will moderate.
View All JTS’s Opening Season Events
ABOUT DAHLIA LITHWICK
Dahlia Lithwick is a senior editor at Slate and, in that capacity, has been writing their “Supreme Court Dispatches” and “Jurisprudence” columns since 1999. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the New Republic, and Commentary, among other places. She is host of Amicus, Slate’s award-winning biweekly podcast about the law and the Supreme Court.
In 2018, Lithwick received the American Constitution Society’s Progressive Champion Award, and the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis. Lithwick won a 2013 National Magazine Award for her columns on the Affordable Care Act. She has been twice awarded an Online Journalism Award for her legal commentary. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in October 2018. In 2021, she was a recipient of the Women’s Media Center’s Exceptional Journalism Awards. In 2021 she won a Gracie Award for Amicus Presents: The Class of RBG, which featured the last in-person audio interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Lithwick has held visiting faculty positions at the University of Georgia Law School, the University of Virginia School of Law, and the Hebrew University Law School in Jerusalem. She was the first online journalist invited to be on the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press. She has testified before Congress about access to justice in the era of the Roberts Court and how #MeToo impacts federal judicial law clerks. She has appeared on CNN, ABC, the Colbert Report, and the Daily Show, and she is a frequent guest on the Rachel Maddow Show.
Ms. Lithwick earned her BA in English from Yale University and her JD from Stanford University. Her new book, Lady Justice, is forthcoming from Penguin Press (September 2022). She is co-author of Me Versus Everybody (Workman Press, 2006) with Brandt Goldstein, and of I Will Sing Life (Little, Brown 1992) with Larry Berger. Her work has been featured in numerous anthologies including Jewish Jocks (2012), What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most (2013), About What Was Lost (2006), A Good Quarrel (2009), Going Rogue: Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare (2009), and Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary (2008).
COVID-19 PROTOCOL
All attendees must be fully vaccinated against Covid-19. You will receive a link to submit your proof of vaccination in your confirmation email after you register. Proof of vaccination should be submitted immediately after you register to ensure that you will be allowed entry into the building. (Current JTS students, faculty, and staff do not need to re-submit proof of vaccination.) All attendees must wear masks at all times inside JTS except when eating or drinking.
ABOUT OPENING SEASON
Join us this spring to experience the very best of JTS. We’re celebrating our new campus with a season of events exploring the intellectual, artistic, and religious breadth of Jewish life. We’re looking to the future, with bold conversations that bring Jewish thought into dialogue with the issues challenging our world.