Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley

Join the Honors Program for an outing to the Courtelyou Commons to see TimeLine Theatre’s preview production of Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley with a pre-show discussion with Professor Bill Johnson Gonzalez.

At 6:30PM, students will meet in Arts and Letters 202 for the pre-show discussion. Tickets will be provided during this time. Then, students will head over to the Cortelyou Commons as a group for a 7:30 PM performance.

About Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley:
Following critically acclaimed runs in New York City and London, TimeLine will create a site-specific, immersive Chicago premiere of the american vicarious’ imagining of the historic debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr., on the occasion of the event’s 60th anniversary.

“Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?” This was the topic on February 18, 1965 when an overflow crowd packed the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, England, to bear witness to a historic televised debate between James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., a fierce critic of the movement and America’s most influential conservative intellectual. The stage was set for an epic confrontation that pitted Baldwin’s call for a moral revolution in race relations against Buckley’s unabashed elitism and implicit commitment to white supremacy. This historic clash reveals the deep roots and lasting legacy of racial conflict that continues to haunt America.