Writing Bravely and Originally in an Age of AI, Polarization, and Groupthink: A Talk with Thomas Chatterton Williams

In an age of polarization and intellectual groupthink, and the encroachment of AI, it is more important--and more difficult--than ever to write in a way that challenges convention and accepted wisdom, all the while grounded in scholarship, logic, and fact. Thomas Chatterton Williams, an author, staff writer at The Atlantic, and visiting professor at Bard College Annandale, will speak with Joshua Yaffa, Bard College Berlin's writer-in-residence, about how to write original ideas and iconoclastic, contrarian arguments. That is, how to be both courageous and creative on the page, while not losing sight of intellectual rigor. Chatterton Williams has embodied these traits in his own writing career, and will share his thoughts and ideas with Bard College Berlin students and faculty.

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Thomas Chatterton Williams is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of three books: Losing My Cool, Self-Portrait in Black and White, and Summer of Our Discontent. He is a visting professor of humanities and senior fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, a 2022 Guggenheim fellow, and a visiting fellow at AEI.

Joshua Yaffa is the inaugural Writer in Residence at Bard College Berlin. He is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and the author of Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin's Russia, which won the Orwell Prize in 2021.

For more information, e-mail [email protected].

Time: 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm CET/GMT+1

Location: Kidd Hall Cafe (W15)

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