With debates over citizenship, voting rights, and due process raging, Columbia University historian Eric Foner wants us to reexamine the moment these rights were enshrined in law: not in 1787, but in the mid19th century, when Constitutional amendments triggered by the Civil War moved the concept of equality from abstract idea to federally enforceable law. Foner, whose previous works on the Civil War and Reconstruction have won the Bancroft, Lincoln, and Pulitzer Prizes, comes to CHF to discuss his newest work, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution, and reveal how the tumultuous history of these consequential rights has shaped the battle over their meaning today.

This program is generously underwritten by Harpinder Ajmani in honor of his late parents, Labh and Rajendra Ajmani. This program was recorded on November 2, 2019.

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