“What Would Tom Paine Think?: Liberal Values In Obama’s First Year”

On January 20, our annual Thomas Paine Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Eric Alterman, media columnist for The Nation and Distinguished Professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College. The event takes place exactly one year after the inauguration of President Obama, and Paine’s view—on issues ranging from economic justice to freedom of and from religion—are highly relevant to some of the most significant political controversies that have emerged during the first year of the new administration.

The event is co-sponsored by the Center for Inquiry-New York City with the New York Society for Ethical Culture and will be held at the Ethical Culture headquarters, 64th Street & Central Park West, beginning at 7 p.m. A question-and-answer period and author booksigning will follow.

Alterman, widely praised for his incisive criticism of the media, is the author, most recently, of Why We’re Liberals: A Handbook for Reviving America’s Most Important Ideals (2008) and What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias And The News. He is also a regular contributor to The Daily Beast and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. For more information visit www.ericalterman.com .

Alterman’s passionate, persuasive, and polemical writing—always backed up by scrupulous research—is in the best tradition of the independent journalism of Thomas Paine, the preeminent propagandist of the American Revolution; radical economic thinker, and passionate advocate for the separation of church and state. Following a tradition established by freethinkers in New York in the early 1820s, the Center for Inquiry (www.centerforinquiry.net/nyc) always celebrates the anniversary of Paine’s birthday (Jan. 29, 1737) with a talk by a distinguished journalist or scholar.