The 10th annual Isaiah Berlin Day in Riga took place on December 13, 2018 at the “Splendid Palace” cinema, celebrating Berlin’s legacy, and discussing the ideas and values expressed and defended by him: pluralism, tolerance and individual liberty.
PROGRAMME
17:00 – 18:15 Documentary “Isaiah Berlin: Philosopher of Freedom” (2018, Judith Wechsler)
The film traces the intellectual development of Isaiah Berlin in the context of his life and times, through archival film and recordings of its subject, as well as interviews with his biographer Michael Ignatieff, his principal editor Henry Hardy, and pianist and writer Alfred Brendel, and others.
18:30 – 20:00 The 10th Isaiah Berlin Memorial Lecture "Turning Points: Yesterday’s World, and Tomorrow’s" by Professor Stephen Kotkin, American historian, author and professor in history and international affairs at Princeton University.
Stephen Kotkin is the John P. Birkelund Professor in History and International Affairs at Princeton University, where he also directs Princeton's Institute for International and Regional Studies. He is also a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Kotkin is the author of many books, among them "Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment", "Armageddon Averted: the Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000" and the biography of Stalin. He was a Pultizer Prize finalist for the first volume of the biography - Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928. http://stephenkotkin.com/
The Isaiah Berlin Day in Riga was organised by the Foundation for an Open Society DOTS in cooperation with the Representation of the European Commission in Latvia and the U.S. Embassy in Latvia. The event was supported by the Riga City Council.
