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Mustafah Dhada, California State University, Bakersfield, 2023
- Bianca Premo, Florida International University, 2022
- Janaki Nair, Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, India, 2019
- David Silverman, Georgetown University, 2018
- Kären Wigen, Stanford University, 2017
- Gregg Mitman, University of Wisconsin at Madison, 2016- webcast
- Jacob Dlamini, Princeton University, 2015- webcast
- Laurent Dubois, Duke University, 2014- webcast
- Jeremy Suri, University of Texas at Austin, 2013- webcast
- Amanda Vickery, University of London, 2013
- Naomi Oreskes, University of California, San Diego, 2011
- Gary Y. Okihiro, Columbia University, 2010
- Lou Perez, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2009
- Peter Duus, Stanford, 2009 (lecture for 2008-2009 academic year)
- Adam Hochschild, 2007 (A webcast of the 2007 Alfred E. Golz Lecture is available on iTunes)
- Peter Hayes '68, Northwestern University, 2006 (A webcast of the 2006 Alfred E. Golz Lecture is available through Hawthorne-Longfellow Library's Special Collections Archive)
- Lizabeth Cohen, Harvard University, 2005
- Joseph C. Miller, University of Virginia, 2004
- Friedrich Katz, University of Chicago, 2003
- Barbara Metcalf, University of California, Davis 2002
- Weiming Tu , Harvard University, 2001
- Martin Schaffner, University of Basel, 2000
- Ira Berlin, University of Maryland, 1999
- Michael Blakey, Howard University, spring 1998
- Jonathan Spence, Yale University, fall 1998
- William B. Taylor, University of California, Berkeley, 1997
- David Keightley, University of California, Berkeley, 1996
- Hans Guggisberg, University of Basel, 1995
- Abiola Irele, Harvard University, 1994
- James McPherson, Princeton University 1993
- Nancy Farriss, University of Pennsylvania 1992
- Pierre Sauvage, Los Angeles, 1991
- Frederic Wakeman, University of California, Berkeley, fall 1990
- Natalie Zemon Davis, Princeton University, spring 1990
- David Brion Davis, Yale University, 1989
Alfred E. Golz Memorial Lecture
Alfred E. Golz Lecture Fund was established by Ronald A. Golz '56 in 1970 in memory of his father. This fund is used to support a lecture by an eminent historian or humanitarian to be scheduled close to the November 21 birthday of Alfred E. Golz.
The Golz Lecture for the 2025-26 academic year will be delivered by Benjamin Nathans.
To The Success Of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives Of The Soviet Dissident Movement
Tuesday, October 7, 2025
7:30 PM
Location: Kresge, VAC
Half a century ago, the Soviet Union found itself unexpectedly challenged by a group of Soviet citizens who achieved global fame in the longest battle of the Cold War – the battle of ideas. The struggle of Soviet dissidents for the rule of law and human rights made them instant heroes in the West as they pursued the goal of containment of Soviet power from within. Rather than see dissidents as surrogate soldiers of democracy and liberalism beyond the iron curtain, historian Benjamin Nathans begins with the idea that dissidents were Soviet people. How do orthodoxies generate their own heresies? How do people and societies emerge from totalitarian forms of rule? Soviet dissidents did something, as one of them put it, “simple to the point of genius: in an unfree country, they began to conduct themselves like free people.” This was the dissident story inside the drama of Soviet history, and not surprisingly, it turned out to be anything but simple.
About the Lecturer: Benjamin Nathans
Benjamin Nathans is the Alan Charles Kors Endowed Term Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches courses on modern Russia and the Soviet Union, modern European Jewry, and the history of human rights. His most recent book, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement, was awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in general non-fiction as well as the Pushkin House (London) Book Prize. His book Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia has been translated into Hebrew and Russian. Nathanscontributes regularly to the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and other periodicals.