CBH Talk | An Unfinished Revolution: Dialogues on Freedom and Democracy with Elizabeth Hinton

Marking the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, join us to reflect, reckon, and reimagine the ideals at the heart of the American experiment. 

Across three evenings, CBH invites distinguished historians to select short readings as starting points for guided public conversations on the promise, limits, and enduring contradictions of a revolution still unfolding.

Our second program features Elizabeth Hinton discussing Dogma, an essay by Justin Surdhyka published in the upcoming anthology Harm + Punishment: Incarcerated Writers on Violence and the US Prison.

For this second program in the series, historian Elizabeth Hinton has selected incarcerated writer Justin Surdyka's Dogma as the evening’s shared reading and point of departure.

Written from inside prison walls, Dogma reflects on power, punishment, freedom, and the systems of belief that sustain mass incarceration in the United States. Using the essay as a springboard, participants will engage in a guided conversation examining democracy, state violence, justice, and the meaning of freedom in a nation that incarcerates more people than any other democracy in the world.

Audience members are invited not simply to listen, but to actively reflect, question, and contribute to the discussion. The evening will be guided by Ben Tumin, creator of the podcast and Substack Skipped History.

Read Dogma by Justin Surdyka here.

This program takes place in CBH’s Othmer Reading Room. Space is limited. Other programs in the series feature historians Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Kellie Carter Jackson.

About "An Unfinished Revolution: Dialogues on Freedom and Democracy" 

As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, this series invites audiences into conversation about the paradox of a nation founded on sweeping democratic ideals that have never been fully realized. Blending historical reflection with participatory dialogue, we'll move from text to conversation to collective exchange, creating space for audiences to grapple together with how the past continues to shape the present and what it might mean to carry forward the unfinished work of democracy.

Participants

Elizabeth Hinton is one of the nation’s leading experts on the roots of mass incarceration and enduring inequality in the United States. The Class of 1954 Professor of History, Black Studies, and Law at Yale University, Hinton serves as the founding director of the Justice for Everybody Movement (J4EM), a university-based center focused on promoting public safety through education, research, and coalition-building.

Hinton’s groundbreaking books—From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime and America on Fire—were each named New York Times Notable Books and have become essential texts in policy and social justice circles. A sought-after public intellectual, Hinton’s commentary appears in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, The Los Angeles Times and beyond. Her research has been supported by the Carnegie Corporation and the Guggenheim, Mellon, and Ford Foundations. Hinton served on the National Academies of Sciences Committee on Reducing Racial Inequalities in the Criminal Justice System and in 2022 was elected to the American Philosophical Society as one of the youngest members in its history.

Ben Tumin is a Brooklyn-based writer, researcher, and performer whose work bridges historical scholarship with live performance, documentary video, and public humanities. He is creator and performer of The Power Broker Trilogy, an original multimedia live series inspired by Robert Caro's landmark work. The trilogy has completed sold-out runs at NYC's Caveat theater, with Part 3 slated for September 2026.

Tumin also produces Skipped History, a weekly newsletter featuring interviews with historians and journalists whose work has appeared in Teen Vogue. His companion web series—researching overlooked people and events that shape contemporary America—has amassed over one million views across platforms and earned profiles in The New York Times and citations in The Washington Post.

This program is funded in part by the NYU Office of Community Engagement.