Camus: A Stranger in the City | Viggo Mortensen Reads Camus' "The Human Crisis"

Introduced by Columbia Professor Souleymane Bachir Diagne and Yale Professor Alice Kaplan, the actor, poet, and musician Viggo Mortensen reads Camus’s speech “The Human Crisis,” in English, seventy years, to the day, after Camus delivered it, and at the exact same place. For Camus, a leader of the French Resistance against Nazi occupation, the indifference of his generation towards death and torture constituted a human crisis. The lecture was Camus’ finest moment in the United States. His reflection about personal responsibility in the face of murder, terror, violence and counter-violence remains as timely in 2016 as it was in 1946. The event will conclude with a roundtable discussion with Viggo Mortensen, Professor Diagne, Professor Madeleine Dobie, and Professor Kaplan.