Enlightenment, Now!
As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of its independence, the 2026 Santa Cruz Night of Ideas invites us not to celebrate the Enlightenment, but to interrogate it. Long associated with democracy, progress, and universal reason, the Enlightenment was also shaped by exclusion, hierarchy, and domination. Its ideals have been unevenly distributed, coexisting with racism, sexism, colonial violence, and economic exploitation.
Rather than treating the Enlightenment as a closed chapter or shared inheritance, this edition centers young voices and civil society to ask urgent questions: whose reason mattered, whose freedoms were secured, and whose futures were denied? What should be preserved, rewritten, or refused?
Through conversations, workshops, performances, and visionary talks, Enlightenment, Now! becomes a space for lived experience and collective experimentation—at a moment marked by technological acceleration, democratic fatigue, climate anxiety, and widening inequality. The aim is not consensus, but momentum: rethinking progress and imagining new political, ethical, and cultural possibilities under radically changed conditions.
Join us on Friday, April 17 at the Institute of the Arts and Sciences to explore what remains of the Enlightenment, and what it might become.