I wanted to take us back to the kind of fluidity that we have very often in history: those pivotal moments when history goes another direction.
David Levering Lewis, distinguished New York University historian and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner for parts one and two of his biography of W. E. B. Du Bois, speaks about his book, God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570–1215. In his narrative, Lewis reveals how a cosmopolitan, Muslim Spain flourished—and saw cooperation and tolerance among Islam, Judaism, and Christianity—while the rest of Europe devolved into hereditary aristocracy, religious intolerance, and perpetual war.
Presented in partnership with The Art Institute of Chicago and the AIC Leadership Advisory Committee.