Timothy Snyder on “The Five Forms of Freedom“

2021 Presidential Lecture in the Humanities Freedom is the main idea of American political life, but no one knows what it means. In this lecture, introduced by Humanities Center Director Roland Greene, Timothy Snyder defines freedom as the capacity to choose among values, envision futures, and realize some of them. He makes the case that freedom takes five forms: sovereignty, unpredictability, mobility, solidarity, and factuality. About the Speaker: Timothy Snyder is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He speaks five and reads ten European languages. His ten chief books are Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (1998); The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (2003); Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (2005); The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke (200