Nicholas Buccola, professor of political science at Linfield College, will present “The Fire is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America” on Wednesday, Oct. 16, at 7 p.m. in Fred Meyer Lounge located in Riley Hall at Linfield. 

In February 1965, James Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr. — two leading American public intellectuals — met at Cambridge University to debate this topic: “the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro.” The result was one of the most intellectually explosive moments of the Civil Rights Era.  

In his book “The Fire Is Upon Us,” Buccola provides the history of that night, not just as a play-by-play of the event, but as an intellectual biography of these two writers’ evolving thoughts on race and its shameful history since America’s birth. With more than half a century of hindsight, we see the radicalism and wary hope of the Civil Rights movement, the fear of black equality by white conservatives, and perhaps most importantly, how five decades later these fights are still very much alive.  

Buccola is the Elizabeth & Morris Glicksman Chair in Political Science and the founding director of the Frederick Douglass Forum on Law, Rights, and Justice. A member of the Linfield faculty since 2007, his teaching and research interests are in political theory and public law. His first book, “The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass,” was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. He is also the author of “The Essential Douglass” and “Abraham Lincoln and Liberal Democracy.”  

The lecture is free and open to the public. The Linfield faculty lecture series offers one presentation each month. For more information, call 503-883-2409.