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M. Gessen to Deliver Fall 2026 Gruber Distinguished Lecture in Women’s Rights

A black and white photo of M. Gessen sitting on a stool.

Acclaimed journalist and author M. Gessen will deliver the fall 2026 Gruber Distinguished Lecture in Women’s Rights. 

The lecture will take place Monday, Oct. 5, at 4:30 p.m. in Room 120 of Sterling Law Building. 

M. Gessen is an acclaimed journalist, author, and public intellectual whose work has profoundly influenced contemporary discussions of democracy, authoritarianism, human rights, and political change.

A contributor to The New Yorker since 2014 and a staff writer from 2017 to 2024, Gessen is the author of 11 books, including “Surviving Autocracy” and “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” which received the 2017 National Book Award. Their reporting and commentary have also appeared in The New York Review of Books and The New York Times, where they have written on Russia, Ukraine, autocracy, LGBTQ rights, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump.

In addition to their political reporting, Gessen has also written on topics such as AIDS, medical genetics, and mathematics.

Gessen is Distinguished Professor at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York and a visiting writer at Bard College. Their many honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, a Nieman Fellowship, the John Chancellor Award, the Hitchens Prize, the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought, a Polk Award, and an Overseas Press Club Award.

The lecture is open to the Yale community and invited guests. Yale IDs will be required to enter. Email the Gruber Program at gruber.events@yale.edu to register. The faculty host of the lecture is Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of Law and director of the Orville H. Schell Jr. Center of International Human Rights Aslı Ü. Bâli ’99.

The Gruber Distinguished Lecture in Women’s Rights and the Gruber Distinguished Lecture in Global Justice feature speakers whose exceptional achievements have served the causes of global justice and women’s rights. The lecture is a core component of the Gruber Program for Global Justice and Women’s Rights, a Yale University program administered by Yale Law School.