For LGBTQ History Month\, join the Library \, Little District Books\, and the Rainbow History Project for a co nversation with Jamie Kirchick\, author of Secret Cit y: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. In conversation with Pau l Smith of Georgetown University\, Kirchick will discuss his new history o f gay people in Washington\, DC and federal government. Following the conv ersation\, Kirchick will answer questions from the audience and sign books .
\nCopies of the book will be available for purchase from Little Di strict Books after the talk. \;
\nMore about the book: "For deca des\, the specter of homosexuality haunted Washington. The mere suggestion that a person might be gay destroyed reputations\, ended careers\, and ru ined lives. At the height of the Cold War\, fear of homosexuality became i ntertwined with the growing threat of international communism\, leading to a purge of gays and lesbians from the federal government. ... Utilizing t housands of pages of declassified documents\, interviews with more than on e hundred people\, and material unearthed from presidential libraries and archives across the country\, [the book] is a chronicle of American politi cs like no other. Beginning with the tragic story of Sumner Welles\, Frank lin Delano Roosevelt's ... diplomatic advisor and the man at the center of 'the greatest national scandal since the existence of the United States\, ' James Kirchick illuminates how homosexuality shaped each successive pres idential administration through to the end of the twentieth century. Cultu ral and political anxiety over gay people sparked a decades-long witch hun t\, impacting everything from the rivalry between the CIA and the FBI to t he ascent of Joseph McCarthy\, the struggle for Black civil rights\, and t he rise of the conservative movement. Kirchick tells of the World War II-e ra gay spymaster who pioneered seduction as a tool of American espionage\, the devoted aide whom Lyndon Johnson treated as a son yet abandoned once his homosexuality was discovered\, and how allegations of a 'homosexual ri ng' controlling Ronald Reagan nearly derailed his 1980 election victory"\n
\n
About the Auth or
\n
James Kirchick is a \;columnist for \;Tablet \;magazine\, a \;writer at large for \;Air Mail\, and author of the instant \;New York Times \;bestseller\, \;Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. A widely published journalist\, he has reported from ov er 40 countries\, and his reportage\, essays\, and reviews have appeared i n the \;New York Times\, the \;Washington Post\, the \;Wall St reet Journal\, the \;Los Angeles Times\, the \;Frankfurter Allgeme ine Zeitung\, the \;Spectator\, \;the \;Atlantic\, the \;N ew York Review of Books\, \;New York\, \;Rolling Stone\, \;and the \;Times Literary Supplement\, among many other publications withi n the United States and around the world. His first book\, \;&ldquo\;T he End of Europe: Dictators\, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age\,&rdquo\; \;was published by Yale University Press in 2017.Kirchick is presentl y a Nonresident Senior Fellow for the Europe Center at the Atlantic Counci l\, and has been a fellow at the Brookings Institution\, the Foreign Polic y Initiative\, and the Robert Bosch Foundation in Berlin. Previously\, he was writer-at-large for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague\, where he wrote about the politics and cultures of the twenty-one countries in th e news company&rsquo\;s broadcast region\, including the First Libyan Civi l War\, a fraudulent presidential election in Belarus\, and revolution and ethnic clashes in Kyrgyzstan.Kirchick began his professional journalism c areer \;at \;The New Republic\, where he wrote about domestic pol itics\, lobbying\, intelligence\, foreign policy\, and \;exposed forme r presidential candidate Ron Paul&rsquo\;s extremist newsletters. Recogniz ed for his voice on American gay politics and international gay rights\, h e is a recipient of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association J ournalist of the Year Award. He is a professional member of the PEN Americ an Center\, sits on the advisory boards of the Vandenberg Coalition\, the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values\, and the Foundation Against Intoleran ce and Racism\, and has contributed essays to the collections \;Fight for Liberty: Defending Democracy in the Age of Trump \;and \;New T hreats to Freedom. Kirchick has spoken at \;colleges and universities across the United States and at venues around the world including the \;Oslo Freedom Forum\, the \;Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democr acy\, the \;Stockholm Free World Forum\, the American Library in Paris \, the Warsaw Security Forum\, the Lennart Meri Conference\, and the Konra d Adenauer Stiftung. Born \;and raised in Boston\, Massachusetts\, Kir chick is a graduate of the Roxbury Latin School and Yale College.
\n\n\n
About the conversation partner
\n
A professor law at Georgetown Un iversity\, Paul M. Smith is also the Senior Vice President at the Campaign Legal Center. Until 2017 he was in private practice at the firm of Jenner &\; Block LLP. He had an active appellate practice for several decades \, including oral arguments in 21 Supreme Court cases in a wide range of c ases but emphasizing civil rights and civil liberties issues. Among his im portant victories have been \;Lawrence v. Texas\, the landmark gay rig hts case\, and Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Assn\, establishing the Fi rst Amendment rights of those who produce and sell video games. Professor Smith also argued a long list of voting rights cases in the Supreme Court.
\nhttps://dclibrary.libnet.info/event/7264466 URL;VALUE=URI:https://dclibrary.libnet.info/event/7264466 ATTACH:https://static.libnet.info/images/events/dclibrary/secretcity.jpg END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR