NATIONAL SYMPOSIUM A World Made Possible – The Four Freedoms at America’s 250th

OVERVIEW

For one afternoon, Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center brings together leading voices in literature, journalism, global affairs, civic life, and Holocaust memory for a landmark symposium on freedom, democracy, and America’s future.

Featured voices include Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste; Jelani Cobb, dean of Columbia Journalism School and staff writer at The New Yorker; Leslie Vinjamuri, Ph.D., president and CEO of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs; Verneé Green, CEO of Mikva Challenge; Maria Hinojosa, award-winning journalist and founder of Futuro Media; and Elisha Wiesel, chairman of The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity and Son of Nobel Laureate, Elie Wiesel.

In January 1941, as Germany occupied much of Europe and the United States stood at the edge of war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt named four freedoms he believed could define a more humane world: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Eighty-five years later, inside a museum built on the evidence of what happens when freedom collapses, those ideals return not as settled promises but as living responsibilities. What does freedom require now?

The symposium opens with Wilkerson, whose keynote examines dignity, hierarchy, and the forces that determine who has been protected by freedom, who has been denied it, and why. Cobb, Vinjamuri, and Green then join Museum CEO Bernard Cherkasov for a national panel on the free press, global accountability, civic participation, and the institutions democratic life cannot survive without. The afternoon closes with Hinojosa and Wiesel, in conversation with Kelley Szany, Senior Vice President of Education and Exhibitions, on Holocaust memory, inherited responsibility, and what it means to act on what history has taught us. The symposium’s themes extend into a special installation.

Word & Vision: Roosevelt, Rockwell, and the Four Freedoms Address
On view in the Lillian & Larry Goodman Auditorium & Gallery
(Please note that additional Museum exhibits will be inaccessible during this program.)
October 21 – December 4, 2026
The text that defined a generation meets the imagery that mobilized a nation. This featured 2026 Symposium installation pairs a preserved original of FDR’s Four Freedoms speech with Norman Rockwell’s iconic 1943 posters – translating Roosevelt’s ideals into images that reached every American home.
On loan from anonymous client of Seth Kaller, Inc.

A reception will precede the event, starting at 2:30 PM.

Registration required

Non-Member/Member: $10.00/session

AGENDA

SPEAKER LINEUP

Supporting Sponsor: Harry and Sadie Lasky Foundation

This symposium has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities.