Drawing on his decades of reporting from Ukraine, Sudan, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Nigeria, Libya, Syria, and Israel, globally renowned philosopher, journalist, and filmmaker Bernard-Henri Lévy(Link is external) will discuss his work in the world’s most troubled places and dangerous combat zones. He will impart why, in these fragile times, we must have the will to educate ourselves and apply our knowledge to repair the world.
Lévy is a French philosopher, the director of eight films, and the author of 48 books. One of the West’s foremost intellectuals, he is an ardent defender of democracy and humanism against totalitarianism and fascism. His recent books include Israel Alone (2024), The Will to See: Dispatches from a World of Misery and Hope (2021), The Virus in the Age of Madness (2020), The Empire and the Five Kings (2019), The Genius of Judaism (2017), American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville (2005), and Who Killed Daniel Pearl? (2003). Lévy has made films on the war in Bosnia; Libya; Iraqi Kurdistan besieged by ISIS; and Afghanistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Ukraine. His work as an intellectual, a writer, and a filmmaker is intertwined with humanitarian activism. For 50 years, Lévy has reported on the world’s “forgotten wars” and devoted numerous books, films, and articles to these crises.
Lévy will be joined in conversation by Flora Champy(Link is external), an associate professor of French, the director of undergraduate studies, and the R.K. Root University Preceptor in the Department of French and Italian at Princeton University. She is also a member of the recently established Princeton Council on Academic Freedom(Link is external), a faculty group that supports academic freedom and cultivates a culture of intellectual pluralism on campus.
This
event is sponsored by the Program in Judaic Studies, Princeton School of Public
and International Affairs, University Center for Human Values, James Madison
Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace
and Justice, and Humanities Council.
