The Village Trip Lecture: Clay Risen – Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America

In Red Scare, New York Times reporter Clay Risen unfolds the gripping story of the political hysteria that gripped America in the 1940s and '50s, an era that continues to reverberate today. In his lecture, Risen will describe how New York City, including the Village itself, became a centerpoint of anti-Communist witch hunting – and a surprising source of resistance. "Risen tells his story with a punch and an economy that are at times almost Hemingwayesque," wrote the New York Times.

From the Los Angeles Times: “’There is a lineage to the American hard right of today,’ he writes, ‘and to understand it, we need to understand its roots in the Red Scare. It did not originate then, nor is Trumpism and the MAGA movement the same as McCarthyism and the John Birch Society. But there is a line linking them.’

“For 480 detailed, tension-packed pages, Risen lays out that line without stepping over it, allowing the past to become prologue. He trusts the reader to make the connections between then and now, and he doesn’t stray from the task at hand, or the specifics of time, place, conflict and culture that led to a protracted period of national shame.”

This lecture 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.'

This event is FREE to attend, but tickets should be booked in advance.