Renewing Hope: Finding Our Way Through a Crisis of Meaning

When: Thursday, November 19, 2026 Time: 11:00 am–12:15 pm Where: British & Irish Studies Room (Norlin Library M549, 5th Floor) RSVP here About the Lecture Many people now sense that the troubles of free societies run deeper than politics or economics: polarization, censorship, and a loss of faith in freedom itself point to a crisis of meaning. Drawing on the philosopher-scientist Michael Polanyi, historian Lenore T. Ealy traces that crisis from the Enlightenment’s competing revolutions through twentieth-century totalitarianism to the present, showing how attempts to control meaning, whether through ideology, technocracy, or state power, undermine both truth and liberty. She argues that science, faith, and freedom are best understood as practices of exploration rather than control, and that hope means giving up the wish to master the future so we can meet reality, and one another, with humility and courage. About the Speaker Lenore T. Ealy, Ph.D., serves as Vicerrectora Internacional at...