Tanner Lecture on Human Values — David Wengrow, “The Elementary Forms of Human Freedom”
7:00pm
2025 Tanner Lecture on Human Values:
David Wengrow, “The Elementary Forms of Human Freedom: Enlightenment without Books”
David Wengrow is Professor of Comparative Archeology at University College London. He has written on the origins of inequality, freedom and social domination, and the archaeology of early states and civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and beyond.
His recent book, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, co-written with David Graeber, challenges long-held assumptions about the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agriculture and permanent settlement. His other books include What Makes Civilization? The Ancient Near East and the Future of the West (Oxford University Press) and The Origins of Monsters: Image and Cognition in the First Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Princeton University Press). He posts on X/Twitter as @davidwengrow.
Discussion of The Dawn of Everything:
- “Do Things Have to Be This Way?” — David Wengrow and David Graeber, Sapiens
- “What if Everything You Learned About Human History Is Wrong?” — Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times
- “How The Dawn of Everything Speaks to the Current Moment” — C. Brandon Ogbunu, Undark
- “Humans Have Always Been Wrong About Humans” — Virginia Heffernan, Wired
- “‘I’m certainly open to criticism’: David Wengrow and the trouble with rewriting human history” — Andrew Anthony, The Guardian
“I am deeply honoured by this invitation to deliver the Tanner Lectures on Human Values next spring, and would like to use this illustrious platform to discuss work in progress, towards a theory of human freedoms that emerges from my joint research with the late anthropologist David Graeber.” — David Wengrow
See also: March 25, Tanner Lecture Symposium with David Wengrow.
Participants: Rosemary Joyce, Rohan Chatterjee, Akinwumi Ogundiran, Eric Herschthal, Anthony Bogues, and Ella Myers.
About the Tanner Lectures on Human Values
Founded by Grace and Obert Tanner in the mid-1970s, the Tanner Lectures are dedicated to enriching the intellectual and moral life of humankind. Annual Tanner Lectures are delivered at nine universities: Stanford, Berkeley, Utah, Michigan, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Oxford, and Cambridge. More information at tannerlectures.org.
For class visits or large group bookings, please contact us at tanner-humanities@utah.edu for special ticketing.
Views expressed in Tanner Humanities Center events do not reflect the official views of the Center or the University of Utah.
