We are Free to Change the World: Lessons from Hannah Arendt

In 1971, in an America rocked by an unpopular war, political scandal, and civil unrest, the political theorist, Hannah Arendt, wrote: ‘We are free to change the world and put something new in it.’ What did she mean, and what in her life and thought had led her to this startling statement?

Drawing on her new book Lyndsey Stonebridge will discuss how Hannah Arendt’s life as a woman, a Jew, and a refugee shaped her extraordinary thinking, looking at the world from outside conventional academic and political categories. What can we learn from her anti-totalitarian thinking today?

About the speaker:

Lyndsey Stonebridge FBA is Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is the multi-award winning author of We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience (2024); Placeless People: Writing, Rights, and Refugees; The Judicial Imagination: Writing After Nuremberg, and the essay collection, Writing and Righting: Literature in the Age of Human Rights. She is a regular media commentator and broadcaster, and lives in London.

Register here