2024 Howard & Virginia Bennett Forum on the Presidency

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS AND THE CHALLENGE OF DEMOCRACY

Thursday, November 21, 2024

6:30 PM CST  |  Onstage & Online
Unity Temple on the Plaza  |  Kansas City, Missouri
Please note: This is a ticketed event.

RESERVE YOUR SEATS for one of our most highly anticipated annual events—The Howard and Virginia Bennett Forum on the Presidency.

In the wake of the presidential election, join political commentators and presidential historians Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy (authors of The Presidents Club) for an exclusive conversation, moderated by David Von Drehle, historian, New York Times best-selling author and Washington Post columnist.

Together, we will look to our nation’s past to better understand the opportunities and challenges created by the 2024 election—and what it means for the future of American democracy.

The 18th Annual Bennett Forum on the Presidency is offered exclusively to Truman Library Institute members and VIP guests. 

• Student / Teacher level = 1 free ticket
• Basic level = 2 free tickets
• Family level and higher = 4 free tickets

MEMBER RSVP

Not yet a Member? Annual memberships start at just $35 and offer nationwide benefits.

JOIN OR RENEW TO REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT.

When you activate your Membership, you will receive an email with your Member-Only registration link for the 18th Annual Bennett Forum on the Presidency. Both in-person and virtual tickets are currently available, but seats are going fast for this popular annual event.

Featured Guests

NANCY GIBBS is the director of the Shorenstein Center and the Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice of Press, Politics and Public Policy. Until September 2017, she was Editor in Chief of TIME, directing news and feature coverage across all platforms for more than 65 million readers worldwide, as well as Editorial Director of the Time Inc. News Group. Gibbs was named TIME’s 17th editor in September 2013, the first woman to hold the position, and remains an Editor at Large. Under her leadership, TIME’s digital audience grew from 25 to 55 million, video streams passed 1 billion a year, and TIME won a primetime Emmy award for its two-part “A Year in Space” documentary, produced with PBS. During her three decades at TIME, she covered four presidential campaigns and is the author of more cover stories than any writer in TIME’s near-100 year history, including the black-bordered “September 11” special issue, which won the National Magazine Award in 2002.

Gibbs has also served as a consultant to CBS News and an essayist for the News Hour on PBS. She is the co-author, along with Michael Duffy, of two best-selling presidential histories: The President’s Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity (2012), which spent 30 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list, and The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House (2007). She has interviewed five U.S. presidents and multiple other world leaders, and lectured extensively on the American presidency, including at the Bush, Reagan, Carter, Johnson and Truman libraries, the Aspen Institute, the Dallas World Affairs Club, the Commonwealth Club and the National Archives. She is a Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy.

MICHAEL DUFFY is Opinions Editor at Large at the Washington Post, where he has worked since December 2018. Before joining the Post, he spent 33 years at TIME magazine as a correspondent and editor, covering the Pentagon, Congress, the White House and national security. He is the coauthor, with Nancy Gibbs, of two New York Times best-selling histories, including The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most exclusive Fraternity (Simon & Schuster).

DAVID VON DREHLE, moderator, is a deputy opinion editor and columnist for The Washington Post where he writes about national affairs and politics. He joined The Post in 2017 after a decade at TIME magazine, where he wrote more than 60 cover stories as editor-at-large. He is the author of a number of books, including Rising to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America’s Most Perilous Year; the award-winning bestseller Triangle: The Fire That Changed America; and most recently, New York Times best seller The Book of Charlie.

About the Forum on the Presidency

The Howard & Virginia Bennett Forum on the Presidency was established in 2006 by Mary and Michael Johnston to fulfill President Truman’s vision for his presidential library as a “classroom for democracy.”