Lecture to focus on how polarization in the U.S. is driving the idea that the Constitution is unamendable.

Photo: Stephanie Mitchell - Harvard University

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. — SEPT 1, 2022 — We’re taught in school that the Constitution is a living, breathing document. But in the current climate of polarization—during a constitutional crisis—is our Constitution essentially unamendable?

Award-winning author and historian Jill Lepore will deliver a lecture titled “Making Amends: Rewriting the U.S. Constitution” on Sept. 22 at 7 p.m. in the James and Betty Hall Theatre on Dutchess Community College’s Poughkeepsie campus. The lecture is the fourth event in the Dr. D. David Conklin Distinguished Lecture Series, established by the DCC Foundation to recognize the College’s fourth president, who retired in 2014.

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper Professor of American History and Affiliate Professor of Law at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker. Lepore’s essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Times Literary Supplement, Foreign Affairs, Yale Law Journal, American Scholar, and American Quarterly; her works have been widely translated and anthologized.

Lepore’s books have been described as lively, funny and intellectually rigorous. Lepore’s most recent book If/Then explores how the Simulmatics Corporation developed manipulative computer technology to try to predict human behavior and win elections during the Cold War.

This is a free community event. For more information, call the DCC Foundation at (845) 431-8400. Please request sign language interpreting services or other special accommodations at least two weeks prior to the event by contacting Linda Bertolozzi at (845) 431-8058 or bertoloz@sunydutchess.edu.

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