Brent Cebul and Lily Geismer discuss Mastery and Drift with contributors Dylan Gottlieb, Nicole Hemmer, and Danielle Wiggins. Moderated by Simon Torracinta.

Since the 1960s, American liberalism and the Democratic Party have been remade along professional class lines, widening liberalism’s impact but narrowing its social and political vision. In Mastery and Drift: Professional-Class Liberals since the 1960s, historians Brent Cebul and Lily Geismer have assembled a group of scholars to address the formation of “professional-class liberalism” and its central role in remaking electoral politics and the practice of governance. 

In this virtual event with Dylan Gottlieb, Nicole Hemmer, and Danielle Wiggins, and moderated by Boston Review contributing editor Simon Torracinta, they will discuss modern liberalism’s historical evolution and enduring impact on contemporary politics and society. 

ABOUT THE PANELISTS

Brent Cebul is Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Illusions of Progress: Business, Poverty, and Liberalism in the American Century.

Lily Geismer is Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College and the author of Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality and Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party. 

Dylan Gottlieb is Assistant Professor of History at Bentley University. His writing has been published in the Journal of American History, Enterprise & Society, Journal of Urban History, The Washington Post, and elsewhere.

Nicole Hemmer is Associate Professor of History, and Director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt. She is the author of Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s.

Danielle Wiggins  is a scholar of race and post-1960s politics. She is currently an assistant professor of history at Caltech. Her first book, Black Excellence: Atlanta and the Making Modern Black Liberalism, will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in September 2025. Her writing has been published in the Journal of Urban History, the Journal of African American History, the Journal of Southern History, Black Perspectives, Atlanta Studies, Slate, and the Washington Post/Time’s “Made By History".

Simon Torracinta is Lecturer in History of Science at Harvard and a contributing editor at Boston Review. His writing has also appeared in n+1 and The New Inquiry.

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