About the lecture:

In the early twentieth century, anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman championed a radical vision of a world without states, laws, or private property. Militant and sometimes violent, anarchists were heroes to many working-class immigrants. But to many others, anarchism was a terrifyingly foreign ideology. Determined to crush it, government officials launched a decades-long “war on anarchy,” a brutal program of spying, censorship, and deportation that set the foundations of the modern surveillance state. The lawyers who came to the anarchists’ defense advanced groundbreaking arguments for free speech and due process, inspiring the emergence of the civil liberties movement.

In this year's Milton M. Klein Memorial Lecture, historian Michael Willrich will talk about his new book, American Anarchy (Basic Books, 2023), which tells the gripping tale of the anarchists, their allies, and their enemies, showing how their battles over freedom and power still shape our public life.

About the speaker:

Michael Willrich is a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow and the Leff Families Professor of History at Brandeis University, where he has received university-wide prizes for his undergraduate and graduate teaching. He is the author of two previous award-winning books, City of Courts and Pox: An American History, and his writing has been published in the New York Times, New Republic, and Mother Jones.

About the series:

Since its inception in 1994, the Milton Klein lecture series has featured distinguished historians of early American history and American legal history. Past speakers have included Kidada Williams, Ada Ferrer, Richard Bell, Wendy Warren, and Marisa Fuentes.

This annual spring lecture series honors the career of the first university historian of UT, Milton M. Klein, who served as the alumni distinguished service professor of history at UT until retiring in 1984. This lecture series reflects Klein’s lifelong commitment to making the study of history dynamic and accessible to all people.