James Baldwin’s America

Please join us for a two-part conversation about America guided by the life and words of American writer and political activist James Baldwin, who died in 1987.  Our first class will use the 1965 Cambridge Union debate between Baldwin and William Buckley, the founder of modern American conservatism, as our starting point for discussion.  Our second class will focus on the 2017 film "I Am Not Your Negro."  Both are available on YouTube and other streaming sources.  Baldwin’s words lie waiting. 

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Paul Gardner taught politics to college students for 40 years.  He retired in 2018 from Luther College, a liberal arts school in northeast Iowa.  In 2021, he received a Fulbright scholar award to teach in Romania about the Black Freedom Movement and American Democracy.