Chair and Associate Professor Launches Speakers Series
Dr. Chad L. Williams will launch the 2015 – 2016 National Endowment for the Humanities Visiting Speakers Series on Thursday, September 24, 2015 at Hartwick College. Dr. Williams will present a lecture titled “W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War.”
Chair and Associate Professor of African & Afro-American Studies here at Brandeis University, Dr. Williams is a noted expert on Du Bois, who stands as arguably the most significant black intellectual in American history. Dr. Williams commented:
In his long life as a scholar and activist, few moments impacted Du Bois as deeply as World War I. When the United States entered the war in 1917, he optimistically encouraged African Americans to rally behind their country in hopes of a brighter democratic future for the race. By the mid-1930s, after some two decades of disillusionment, Du Bois came to see the war as a tragic failure and his own position one of deep shame. The story of Du Bois and World War I is the story of what the war meant for African Americans, a painful struggle to be seen as full American citizens and find meaning in a moment of supreme sacrifice that, in the face of continued racism, felt increasingly futile.
Hartwick College is a private liberal arts and sciences college of 1,500 students, located in Oneonta, NY, in the northern foothills of the Catskill Mountains.