Timothy Snyder and Jessica Levinson | October 25, 2025

www.writersblocpresents.com Skirball Cultural Center Video: Karl Sonnenberg Freedom is our great American challenge. What exactly is freedom and how do we keep it? Political commentator and historian Timothy Snyder, internationally renowned expert on the rise of authoritarianism and fascism in Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th Century and beyond, asks what freedom means in his new book. On Freedom explains in the brilliant way that only he can, what liberty does and does not entail. The question of what freedom means rings throughout the book. What could be more relevant now? For years, throughout so many of his great books (such as On Tyranny; Bloodlands; Black Earth; and others) Snyder has been warning us about the fragility of freedom, and what we can and must do to retain it and to reclaim it. And he is clear that it’s now or never. As we know, especially at this particular moment in American life, politics and the law not only intersect, but often collide, and sometimes combust. Besides being a brilliant and dedicated Supreme Court observer, Jessica Levinson is a professor at Loyola Law School where her work focuses on Constitutional Law and Election Law. She is also the Director of Loyola’s Journalist Law School and Loyola’s Public Service Institute. She is a CBS news legal analyst, a columnist for MSNBC, has a weekly legal segment on KCRW’s terrific public affairs and culture show, Press Play, and is host of the Passing Judgment podcast. Levinson is also the past president of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission.