According to research, public trust in the Supreme Court is near a three-decade low. Most Americans, across party lines, still say justices shouldn't let politics shape their rulings, and most also believe, increasingly, that they do. Rachel A. Shelden, author of “The Political Supreme Court: A Forgotten History,” speaks at the Cambridge Forum.

Rachel A. Shelden is a historian of nineteenth-century America and Associate Professor of History at Penn State University, where she also directs the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center. Her research explores the intersections of politics, constitutionalism, law, and slavery, with a particular focus on the role of personal relationships and political networks.

Nina Zannieri, Executive Director of the Paul Revere House, hosts two noted silver experts for a thoughtful discussion of Revere as perhaps America’s best-known silversmith.

Janinehas curated exhibitions, lectured, and written widely on the topics of silver, ceramics, and dining in England and America.

Jeannine is an independent curator working in craft, design, and American culture.

Journalist Jon Gertner explains the origins and unique capabilities of Bell Laboratories, AT&T’s vaunted R&D organization. The work at the labs led to many of the most revolutionary technologies of the 20th Century, including the transistor, the laser, digital communications, the solar cell, and communications satellites.

Jon is a writer for the New York Times Magazine and is an editor at Fast Company magazine.

After Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, Sarah Longwell did what she's done nearly every week for the past eight years: She sat down with voters. Now she offers a playbook for building a coalition big enough, bold enough, and tough enough to defeat authoritarian populism for good.

Virginia Eubanks comes to Cambridge for a discussion of her new memoir, "A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving: Lessons on Love, Care, and Survival," a moving story of her own efforts to survive caregiving, trauma, love, and the systems seemingly set up to fail us.

Harvard Book Store welcomes Dr. David N. Hackney—Professor of Reproductive Biology at Case Western Reserve University and Division Chief of Maternal Fetal Medicine, as well as District Legislative Chair of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists—for a discussion of his new book, "Impossible Choices: A Physician's Guidance on High-Risk Pregnancy in a World Without Roe". He will be joined in conversation by Dr. Chloe Zera—Chief of the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an Associate Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School.

How the overturning of Roe has imperiled high-risk pregnancies—and how to ensure safe patient healthcare in the future.

From a leading doctor on the front lines after the Dobbs decision.

Doctors and patients confronting high-risk pregnancies have always faced profound and life-altering decisions. But after the 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe, many of these decisions seem impossible. As a firsthand witness to this convulsion, David Hackney, a leading physician in maternal fetal medicine, offers knowledgeable, thoughtful guidance to patients and practitioners contending with high-risk pregnancies in our new reality.

"Impossible Choices" focuses on the practical implications of high-risk complications for people who are pregnant or considering pregnancy—including conditions such as pre-eclampsia, premature membrane rupture, or birth defects—especially in states now under abortion bans. And because maternal fetal medicine overlaps with other medical fields as pregnant patients struggle with, for instance, kidney disease, lupus, diabetes, and cancer, the book also addresses a wide array of medical questions and complications.

How do we make decisions when thrown into extreme and uncertain circumstances? The author answers this question and more by painting a nuanced and clear-eyed picture of obstetrics after Dobbs, illustrating his reflections with stories from his own practice, as well as those of his wife, in pediatric oncology. Without being partisan or polemical, the book offers the informed compassion and way forward that this fraught moment in maternal medicine calls for.