Speaker(s): Masha Gessen

Masha Gessen is a journalist and the author of numerous books, including The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, which won the 2017 National Book Award for Nonfiction. 

As a journalist and editor in Russia for more than 20 years, Gessen experienced the rise of Vladimir Putin firsthand. In addition to writings on Russia, autocracy, and LGBT rights, Gessen has been a science journalist, writing about AIDS, medical genetics, and mathematics. Famously, Gessen was dismissed as editor of the Russian popular-science magazine Vokrug Sveta for refusing to send a reporter to observe Putin hang-gliding with the Siberian cranes. 

A staff writer for The New Yorker who regularly contributes to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Harper’s and The New York Review of Books, Gessen is the author of nine books, including Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot; Where the Jews Aren’t: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region; and The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. 

Gessen is a visiting professor at Amherst College and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, a Nieman Fellowship, and the Overseas Press Club Award for Best Commentary. 

Speaker(s): Amor Towles

A transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel, A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in an elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov.

When, in 1922, Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates Count Rostov’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow, his second novel, was named one of the best books of 2016 by the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The San Francisco Chronicle, and NPR. Towles is also the author of Rules of Civility. A graduate of Yale College, Towles received a masters in English from Stanford University. His thesis at Stanford, a short story cycle called “The Temptations of Pleasure,” was published in Paris Review 112.

Speaker(s): Alina Polyakova

Alina Polyakova is the David M. Rubenstein Fellow, Bookings Institution's Center on the United States and Europe, where she specializes in European politics, far-right populism and nationalism, and Russian foreign policy. She is also an adjunct professor of European studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Part of the Brookings-Robert Bosch Foundation Transatlantic Initiative, Polyokova is the author of, most recently, The Dark Side of European Integration. Prior to joining Brookings, she served as director of research and senior fellow for Europe and Eurasia at the Atlantic Council. She is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Swiss National Science Foundation senior research fellow. Polyakova's writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The American Interest, as well as a number of academic journals and media outlets. She has also been a fellow at the Fulbright Foundation, Eurasia Foundation, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, International Research and Exchanges Board, and a Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Bern.

Polyakova holds a doctorate and master's in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor's in economics and sociology from Emory University.

Speaker(s): Nina Khrushcheva

Nina Khrushcheva is Professor in the Graduate Program of International Affairs at The New School, author of The Lost Khrushchev: A Journey Into the Gulag of the Russian Mind, and biological great-granddaughter (and adopted granddaughter) of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Khrushcheva is a senior fellow of the World Policy Institute, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue, and an editor of and a contributor to Project Syndicate: Association of Newspapers Around the World. Previously, Khrushcheva taught briefly at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and held a two-year appointment as a research fellow at the School of Historical Studies of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She also served as deputy editor of East European Constitutional Review at the New York University School of Law. In 2013, the Carnegie Corporation of New York honored Khrushcheva with their Great Immigrants: The Pride of America Award.

Her writings have appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Financial Times, among other publications. In addition to The Lost Khrushchev, she is the author of the book Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics.

Khrushcheva holds degrees from Moscow State University and Princeton University, where she received her PhD.

Speaker(s): Victoria Lomasko

What does it mean to live in Russia today? What is it like to grow up in a forgotten city, to be a migrant worker or to grow old and seek solace in the Orthodox church?

For the past eight years, graphic artist and activist Victoria Lomasko has been travelling around Russia and talking to people as she draws their stories. She spent time in dying villages where schoolteachers outnumber students; she stayed with sex workers in the city of Nizhny Novgorod; she went to juvenile prisons and spoke to kids who have no contact with the outside world; and she attended every major political rally in Moscow.

The result is Other Russias, Lomasko’s first collection of graphic journalism and an extraordinary portrait of Russia in the Putin years — a country full of people who have been left behind, many of whom are determined to fight for their rights and for progress against impossible odds. Empathetic, honest, funny, and often devastating, Lomasko’s portraits show us a side of Russia that is hardly ever seen.

A graduate of the Moscow State University of Printing Arts, Victoria Lomasko now works as a graphic artist, with a particular focus on graphic reportage. Drawing on the Russian tradition of reportage drawing, Lomasko explores current Russian society, especially the inner workings of the country's diverse communities and groups, such as Russian Orthodox believers, LGBT activists, underage prostitutes, migrant workers, sex workers, and collective farm workers. English translations of her work have previously been published on the websites Chtodelat News, The Russian Reader, and n+1.

Speaker(s): William J. Burns

William J. Burns is president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the oldest international affairs think tank in the United States. Burns retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2014 after a 33-year diplomatic career. He holds the highest rank in the Foreign Service, career ambassador, and is only the second serving career diplomat in history to become deputy secretary of state.

Prior to his tenure as deputy secretary, Burns served from 2008 to 2011 as under secretary for political affairs. He was ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs from 2001 to 2005, and ambassador to Jordan from 1998 to 2001. His other posts in the Foreign Service include: executive secretary of the State Department and special assistant to former secretaries of state Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright; and minister-counselor for political affairs at the U.S. embassy in Moscow; among other posts.

Burns has been the recipient of three Presidential Distinguished Service Awards and numerous Department of State awards, including three Secretary’s Distinguished Service Awards, two Distinguished Honor Awards, the 2006 Charles E. Cobb, Jr. Ambassadorial Award for Initiative and Success in Trade Development, and the 2005 Robert C. Frasure Memorial Award for Conflict Resolution and Peacemaking.

Burns earned a bachelor’s in history from LaSalle University and master’s and doctoral degrees in international relations from Oxford University, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar.

Speaker(s): Amy Knight

Amy Knight, historian; author, Orders to Kill: The Putin Regime and Political Murder

Amy Knight is the author of six books on Russian history and politics, including Orders to Kill: The Putin Regime and Political Murder, published in 2017 by St. Martin's Press.   

A former Woodrow Wilson fellow,  Knight worked as a Soviet/Russian affairs expert at the U.S. Library of Congress and taught at the London School of Economics, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Carleton University in Ottawa. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and the Daily Beast.

Speaker(s): Dr. Braden Allenby

Brad Allenby, Lincoln Professor of Engineering and Ethics, Arizona State University
“Russia at the Gates: The Fall of the American Empire”

Brad Allenby is Lincoln Professor of Engineering and Ethics, and President’s Professor of Engineering, at Arizona State University.  He holds a BA from Yale University, a J.D. and M.S. in economics from the University of Virginia, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in environmental science from Rutgers University.  He is an expert in emerging military/security technologies and weaponized narrative.

Speaker(s): Chris Coons

Chris Coons was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010 following terms as New Castle County Council president and New Castle County executive. In the Senate, he sits on the Appropriations, Judiciary, Foreign Relations, Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and Ethics committees.

Coons has used his position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to advocate for key foreign policy and national security priorities, from introducing a bill to establish a Senate Select Committee on Cyber Security with Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) to speaking at the Brookings Institution on the importance of pushing back on Russian aggression. A member of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy, he has emerged as an important voice on the continent’s security challenges and economic opportunities, focused on ensuring that health programs, food aid, economic development and security assistance effectively reach those in need.

Prior to serving as county executive, Coons worked as an attorney for Delaware-based W.L. Gore & Associates, directing regulatory and international efforts. He graduated from Amherst College with a bachelor's degree in chemistry and political science, and earned his law degree from Yale Law School and a master's degree in ethics from Yale Divinity School.

Speaker(s): Bill Barker

Bill Barker, Colonial Williamsburg character-interpreter

Mr. Jefferson Speaks on the Declarations of Independence Mr. Jefferson was in Paris just down the street from the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and he will discuss both the French and the American Declarations of Independence with us. Bill Barker has been featured in magazines including Time, People, The Atlantic, Philadelphia, Southern Living and Reader’s Digest, and has appeared as Jefferson in programs aired on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN and The History Channel.