History
September 2026 • Politics
Above the Fray? Rethinking the Supreme Court Independence
What the Supreme Court ever what we thought it was?
November 2004 • History
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, AMERICAN HERO
How did Benjamin Frankin evolve from British loyalist to American colonist?
June 2026 • Culture
BEFORE 1776: KING PHILIP’s WAR AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA
What happens when we challenge the standard narrative of King Philip’s War? We’ve been taught that in Wampanoag country the war ended in total devastation: leaders killed, survivors enslaved. But is that the whole story?
January 1985 • General
Rev. Jesse Jackson: “Happy Birthday, Doctor King”
A birthday present to Dr. King, featuring the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who was by the side of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during many of the historic civil rights marches which inspired the nation during the 1960’s. Herbert Vetter, Director of Cambridge Forum introduces this broadcast on the occasion of a 1985 memorial service in commemoration of Dr. King, on his birthday, at the Memorial Church, Harvard University.
June 2025 • History
The Life and Legacy of Malcolm X
One hundred years after his birth and sixty years after his untimely death, Malcolm X still haunts the American consciousness. Mark Whitaker has put together a full and intriguing picture of the man’s life and legacy in The Afterlife of Malcolm X.
February 2025 • Politics
LIVING IN THE SHADOW OF OUR FATHERS
Omo Moses‘s book, The White Peril, is a coming-of-age story, a multigenerational family memoir, an epic father-son road trip, a searing account of the Black male experience. Moses deftly interweaves his own life story with excerpts from both his great-grandfather’s sermons and the writings of his father, the civil rights activist Robert P. Moses.
November 2024 • Arts
Orwell, 1984, etc.
Cambridge Forum is pleased to mark the 75th anniversary of the publication of 1984 with an in-depth discussion about George Orwell’s life, work, and legacy.
April 2024 • History
Liberty Equality Fashion: The Women Who Styled the French Revolution
While the motto of the French Revolution was “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” it might as well have been “Liberty, Equality, Fashion,” as Anne Higonnet argues in her groundbreaking new book of the same title.
May 2023 • History
Challenging History: On the Streets of Newtowne
A new book aims to paint a more multi-dimensional view of the area charting its cultural influences and history starting ten thousand years ago, when indigenous people built communities there.
May 2022 • History
Legacies of Slavery
Historian David Hackett Fischer shines a light on the little-known history of how enslaved Africans and their descendants created new regional cultures and enlarged American ideas of freedom.
March 2022 • Classics
Black History: On Rewind
To celebrate our newly digitized collection of eminent historical black orators, Cambridge Forum has teamed up with the Lincoln Institute to present a panel discussion.
January 2022 • Climate
The Soundtrack of the World
For over 50 years, naturalist Bernie Krause has witnessed evidence of multiple environments being radically altered by human influence, and the resultant soundtracks or “biophonies” reflect chaotic alterations due to stress.
October 2021 • Culture
The Truth at The Heart of the Lie: How the Catholic Church Lost Its Soul
James Carroll explores what has broken the modern Catholic Church as chronicled in The Truth At The Heart Of The Lie.
September 2021 • Culture
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
Kristin Du Mez traces how a militant ideal of white Christian manhood has come to pervade evangelical popular culture in America.
August 2021 • Classics
N***er: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word
Randall Kennedy takes on not just the N-word word, but our laws, attitudes, and culture with references that extend from the Jim Crow south to Chris Rock and the O. J. Simpson trial.
January 1998 • Classics
Truth and Reconciliation
Archbishop Desmond Tutu is a world-renowned human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
March 2006 • Classics
Epic Journeys of Freedom
Historian Cassandra Pybus traces the lives of the runaway slaves who absorbed the dreams of liberty from their masters during the American Revolution and fled to the British to find freedom.
May 1987 • Classics
Eyes on the Prize
Henry Hampton, the driving force behind Eyes on the Prize and Blackside, speaks in 1987 at Cambridge Forum about his vision of the remarkable human drama that was the Civil Rights Movement.
June 2003 • Politics
Slavery and the Invention of America
Civil rights activist Byron Rushing traces the theme of colonial domination and slavery in the shaping of America’s history and civilization, beginning with the “founding” of a country that was already known to its original inhabitants, the native Americans.
July 1997 • Classics
Beloved Community: African American Women
Civil rights activist and Baptist minister Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, reflects on how Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman helped shape our ideas of humanity and advanced the struggle to recognize the dignity of all.
February 1992 • History
Colored People
Henry Louis Gates, Chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department at Harvard University, discusses his book Colored People, a memoir that weaves personal narrative with social history of the 1950s.
September 1997 • History
Beloved Law Community: Lani Guinier
Lani Guinier discusses her vision of a beloved community in a law school setting. How should the terms of legal education be re-defined?
February 1998 • History
Beloved Community: Cosmopolitanism
Afro-American scholar and philosopher K. Anthony Appiah considers the idea of a community founded on the principles of inclusion, hope, and mutual respect, a community that transcends the polarizing rhetoric of racism.
January 2021 • Politics
Markers and Reminders: MLK to BLM
Cambridge Forum partners with the Harvard Square Business Association to examine Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy and Black Lives Matter’s impact on the history of Cambridge, Boston, and beyond.
July 2020 • Classics
Civil Rights: Yesterday and Today
In honor of the late US Congressman from Georgia John Lewis, here’s a special Cambridge Forum we recorded in 2001 at the National History Museum in Lexington, Massachusetts.
April 2019 • History
They Were Her Property
Historian Stephanie Jones-Rogers discusses her new book about the role of white women in American slavery. They Were Her Property reveals that slave-owning women were sophisticated economic actors who benefited from the South’s slave market.
December 2017 • Culture
Race Still Matters
Political activist, author, and Harvard University professor Cornel West speaks on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his national best-seller Race Matters.
June 2017 • Politics
Rwandan Women Rising
Swanee Hunt speaks about her experiences in Rwanda from her new book Rwandan Women Rising which follows the story of the women who worked for peace after the genocide in 1994.
April 2015 • Politics
The Health of Democracy: Voter Suppression and Disenfranchisement
How can citizens respond when the ideals of democracy come into conflict with the policies of government?
March 2015 • Politics
The Health of Democracy: Economic Inequality
Historian Colin Gordon explores the growth of economic inequality and its implications for a healthy democracy. Michael Widmer, former president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, examines how tax policy can support or lessen economic inequality.
January 2015 • Politics
Duel Over Dinner: Washington and Hancock on State Sovereignty
Historian Timothy Breen explores one of the first disagreements over the power relationship between federal and state governments.
October 2014 • Culture
Immigrant Struggles, Immigrant Gifts
By examining the immigrant experience of various ethnic and religious groups throughout U.S. history, Immigrant Struggles, Immigrant Gifts demonstrates that the same patterns of native resistance, immigrant struggles, and contributions have occurred repeatedly.
November 2014 • Politics
Witness to History: Remembering Freedom Summer
Jack Landron, a young musician well known to Boston-area audiences for his performances as Jackie Washington at Club 47 in Harvard Square, remembers his journey to Mississippi during the Freedom Summer.
December 2014 • Culture
Christ Actually: Jesus in the 21st Century
Award-winning author James Carroll discusses his new book, Christ Actually: The Son of God for The Secular Age with Harvey Cox of Harvard Divinity School.
December 2013 • History
Bunker Hill and the Crisis of Leadership in Revolutionary America
Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution reflects on the bloody battle in Charlestown on June 17, 1775.
March 2013 • Politics
Brokers of Deceit
Rashid Khalidi, one of the foremost historians of the modern Middle East, zeroes in on the United States’ role as a broker of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Analyzing the 1982 “Reagan Plan,” the negotiations leading to the Oslo Accords, and President Obama’s stance toward the conditions for Middle East peace, […]
May 2011 • History
Charles Sumner at 200: The Tradition of Civil Rights in America
Beverly Morgan-Welch of the Museum of African American History and Daniel Coquillette of Harvard Law School discuss Sumner’s significance in America’s ongoing struggle for civil rights.
September 2012 • History
A Test Case for America: Washington, Longfellow and the Jewish Community at Newport
Ted Widmer, director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, speaks about George Washington’s 1790 letter to the Jewish community in Newport.
March 2012 • Politics
Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China
Harvard China scholar Ezra Vogel discusses his highly acclaimed biography of transformational Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.
November 2011 • History
Columbus: The Four Voyages
Biographer Laurence Bergreen retraces the voyages of Christopher Columbus, placing the 15th-century explorer into the context of the Age of Discovery.
October 2007 • History
Marco Polo’s Journey to China Along the Silk Road
Historian Laurence Bergreen discusses Marco Polo’s journey to China along the Silk Road.
February 2005 • Culture
Beloved Community: African American Lives
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Harvard University, discusses African American Lives at Cambridge Forum in 2005.
August 2002 • Work
The Life and Times of Madame C.J. Walker
A’Lelia Bundles, Emmy-winning producer and journalist shares stories from her best-selling book about her great-great-grandmother, Madame C.J. Walker, one of the first black women entrepreneurs of the 20th century.
February 1993 • Classics
Mississippi: Then and Now
Bob Moses, a veteran of the civil rights struggle, draws an analogy between the early voter registration drives in Mississippi during the 1960s and an innovative school curriculum called The Algebra Project.