Innocence

A writer in residence in the Library's Allen Room, Mark Lilla is an essayist and historian of ideas at Columbia University in New York City.

A frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, the New Republic, and the New York Times, he is best known for his books The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics and The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West. After holding professorships at New York University and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, he joined Columbia University in 2007 as Professor of the Humanities. He lectures widely and has delivered the Weizmann Memorial Lecture in Israel, the Carlyle Lectures at Oxford University, and the The MacMillan Lectures on Religion, Politics, and Society at Yale University.