RUSSELL JACOBY
“On Diversity”
The Eclipse of the Individual in a Global Era
With Kevin Cartwright
Thursday, March 26, 2020, 7:30 PM
Hillside Club
2286 Cedar Street
Berkeley
tickets:
$12 advance tickets: brownpapertickets.com T:800.838.3006, or Marcus Books, or East Bay Books, or Books Inc. (Berkeley), or Pegasus Books (3 shops), or Moe’s, or Mrs. Dalloway’s, or Walden Pond Bookstore
$15 door, KPFA benefit
Information: kpfa.org/events
Russell Jacoby is one of the most prescient and important writers in the United States. His prose is as lucid and penetrating as his intellect. His moral compass makes his observations prophetic.
Diversity is a word much repeated in the news, in universities, in casual conversations, even at television awards’ shows. But what does the word actually mean? How do we square our seeming love of the word with the fact that our world is actually becoming increasingly less diverse and more homogenous all the time? That conformity in virtually every way is in fact rapidly accelerating? That we are all too often marching to the same potentially fatal drumbeat?
At last, one of America’s greatest intellectual gadflies directly takes on this question with straightforward prose . On Diversity: The Eclipse of the Individual in a Global Era delves into language, fashion, politics and even childhood experience to present a surprising, often penetrating analysis of our cultural moment. When so many of our public thinkers appear to be tangling with one another in order to be credited with the latest proper opinion, Russell Jacoby offers a fresh, dangerous, liberating injunction: just stop and think.
The author bracingly affirms the importance of the individual distinction that our classic thinkers identified as the ultimate aspiration for an age of increasing conformity in how we raise our children, what we wear, how we talk, even how we hobble our own brains.
Jacoby asks the necessary questions, the ones few other contemporary writers care to pose… On Diversity is first-rate intellectual history and penetrating cultural criticism.
Kevin Cartwright was a radio producer, media trainer and music programmer for Pacifica Radio station KPFA-FM for 25 years. Kevin is a communications strategist who continues to work with a number of local, state and national social change organizations across the country to help improve their overall communication and PR strategies, framing and messaging apparatus, media engagement and social media.
