LAPHAM'S QUARTERLY

× Lapham’s Quarterly Announces New Stewardship Under Bard College’s Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities Legendary Editor’s Beloved Magazine to Return to Publishing This Year

Annandale-on-Hudson, NY – Lapham’s Quarterly, the celebrated journal of history and ideas founded by the late editor and journalist Lewis H. Lapham, will relaunch under the stewardship of Bard College and its Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities in 2025. With Bard College’s guidance, the Quarterly will resume publication with an editorial team that works closely with longtime contributors, supporters, and the broader literary community. Further details regarding the magazine’s relaunch, programming, and initiatives will be announced in the coming months.

The transition comes at a pivotal moment in the publication’s history, as staff, subscribers, and supporters mourn the loss of Lapham, who passed away in July 2024. This new chapter ensures that his vision and legacy will endure for generations to come.

Founded in 2007 by Lapham, the longtime editor of Harper’s Magazine, Lapham’s Quarterly has remained a beacon of historical and literary thought, drawing on the great writers of the past and vital voices of the present to illuminate our times. After a yearlong hiatus and restructuring, this partnership with Bard College marks a rare second chance for a literary journal—one that secures its future and reaffirms its place in the intellectual landscape. 

The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, renowned for its interdisciplinary exploration of politics, culture, and the human condition, will adopt the Quarterly’s assets, including its archives, back issue inventory, media, and intellectual property. The Center plans to build upon Lewis H. Lapham’s legacy by integrating the journal into Bard’s broader mission of fostering critical inquiry and dialogue.

This transition not only ensures that Lapham’s Quarterly will continue to thrive but also represents a broader commitment to preserving intellectual legacies in an era when historical reflection is more important than ever.

“Lewis Lapham was a singular figure in American letters, and the Quarterly was a testament to his unyielding belief in the power of history to inform the present,” said Paul W. Morris, Publisher of Lapham’s Quarterly. “With its reputation for academic excellence and dedication to critical thinking, Bard College and the Hannah Arendt Center are the ideal custodians of this legacy. This collaboration is not only a lifeline but also a transformative opportunity to reimagine the Quarterly’s future while staying true to Lewis Lapham’s original vision.”

Before his passing last summer, Lapham endorsed the promise of this partnership and saw its obvious potential. Bard College will help realize Lapham’s longtime dream of distributing free copies of the Quarterly to incarcerated readers. Through the Bard Prison Initiative, one of the country’s most respected college-in-prison programs, Lapham’s Quarterly will be made available to incarcerated students in the program as a resource for intellectual engagement, historical education, and critical thinking. This initiative underscores the shared mission of both Bard College and the Quarterly to expand access to ideas and literature for all.

“Lewis’ monthly column first at Harper’s and then at Lapham’s Quarterly was at the center of my intellectual universe for nearly two decades,” said Roger Berkowitz, Founder and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center. “His intellectual curiosity, his belief that history and the humanities illuminate and inform the present fully aligns with the mission at the Arendt Center and Bard College, to be an institutional space for bold and provocative humanities thinking about the public world. We are honored to continue his extraordinary work and look forward to shaping the future of Lapham’s Quarterly while remaining faithful to its founding ideals.”

In addition to Bard College’s new stewardship of Lapham’s Quarterly, Columbia University has acquired Lewis H. Lapham’s private archives for its Rare Book & Manuscript Library, further cementing his legacy among the great intellectuals, writers, and editors of his time. The acquisition includes his correspondence, annotated books, editorial notes, and unpublished writings, offering scholars a reservoir of insight into his life’s work.

Meanwhile, Hawthornden Foundation, a longtime champion of literary preservation, has also committed to honoring Lapham’s legacy with a permanent tribute at the Quarterly’s Union Square West office. This space will feature a full set of Lapham’s Quarterly journals, a commemorative plaque, and a display of Lapham’s typewriter and personal desk—artifacts imbued with his lifelong devotion to letters. Hawthornden’s archivist will catalog the Quarterly’s extensive library, creating specially designed bookplates that mark each volume as part of the journal’s institutional collection.

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Lapham’s Quarterly is a project of the American Agora Foundation, an organization dedicated to fostering an appreciation of history. Established in 2007 by former Harper’s Magazine editor Lewis H. Lapham, the magazine embodies the belief that historical consciousness is an asset a democratic republic can ill afford to lose, that history is the root of all education—social and scientific; spiritual, political, and economic. Each issue of the Quarterly focuses on a question of primary and always current concern—recent issues focused on freedom, migration, epidemics, democracy, and climate—by placing the voices and witnesses of the past at the service of the present. www.laphamsquarterly.org

The mission of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities is to foster thinking about problems and crises that reflect the insight and independence that Hannah Arendt brought to bear on political and ethical themes from anti-Semitism and totalitarianism to thoughtless consumerism and lying in politics. On the major issues of our time—from terror and torture to dissent and the environment—the Arendt Center will bring established public intellectuals and young fellows to Bard to try to, as Arendt would have it, comprehend these events. The effort is not to divine what Hannah Arendt would do or say; instead, it is to take Arendt’s singular and much needed approach to political questions as a spur to rigorous, daring, and creative engagement. www.hac.bard.edu

For media inquiries or further information, please contact:
Paul Morris
Publisher, Executive Director, Lapham’s Quarterly
[email protected], 347.413.4889