Reading the Declaration of Independence: A Conversation About Our Past and Present

For the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, join New Yorkers for a roundtable discussion of the Declaration. What did it mean in 1776? What does it mean today?

Robert Snyder, Professor Emeritus of American Studies and Journalism at Rutgers University and former Manhattan Borough Historian, will lead our conversation.

The event will open with a reading of the full Declaration by Henry McDaniel but attendees should aim to read it themselves ahead of time to enable full engagement in this important session.

Professor Snyder has devoted his career to sharing history with a broad public to better understand the past and present. He is a former Fulbright lecturer in American Studies and has written six books on New York City including: Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York, and All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants and the Making of New York. His latest, When the City Stopped: Stories from New York’s Essential Workers, won the LaGuardia Book Prize.

• Robert Snyder

• Henry McDaniel

• Note: The event is free, but NYU requires all bookings to be made by 5pm on Thursday September 24 for security purposes.

This event is sponsored by David Kadish and Michael Norton in memory of David’s uncle, Robert Shelton, the New York Times critic who was a victim of the McCarthy-era Eastland Committee, chaired by notorious Mississippi Senator James Eastland, a ferocious segregationist. Shelton wrote the celebrated September 1961 review credited with launching Bob Dylan’s career. His biography, Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, was acclaimed by Mojo as 'A landmark account of Dylan's genesis and ascension.'