Thomas Mann House Events Archive
October 2026
All We Say: The Political Power of Speeches
YouTube & Spotify
Info
Video by Boris Schaarschmidt
You can also listen to this conversation on our Spotify.
About the Speakers
Grégoire Roos has been Director for Europe and Russia at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) since fall 2025. Previously, he was Head of Political Dialogue and Political Innovation at the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt. In this role, he has built up the BMW Foundation’s political dialogue and practice for political innovation and advanced the Foundation’s work on climate issues. Grégoire Roos is passionate about art and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the non-profit organization International Arts & Artists (USA). Grégoire Roos is also a (non-resident) fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. Grégoire Roos studies the transformative impact of coalitions of public, private and philanthropic actors. These public-private-philanthropic partnerships (PPPPs) are relatively advanced in the United States, especially in California. His focus is on the possibilities of creating a political discourse based on science and art.
"The Librarians" – On Censorship and Book Bans
Los Angeles Public Library (Central Branch)
Language: English・Live ASL interpretation
Info
Participants
Kim A Snyder is an Academy Award nominated, Emmy and Peabody Award-winning Director/Producer. Her latest feature documentary, The Librarians, premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, and won a 2026 Primetime Emmy® for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. The Librarians has won 30 festival awards, was released theatrically in over 200 cities internationally, and broadcast on PBS/Independent Lens.
Her most recent short documentary, Death By Numbers, was nominated for a 2025 Academy Award®. Snyder’s other acclaimed films include Us Kids (Sundance 2020), Lessons From A School Shooting (Best Short Doc Tribeca 2018, Netflix Original), Newtown (Sundance 2016, Peabody Award, PBS/Independent Lens), and Welcome To Shelbyville (2009 PBS/Independent Lens). She associate produced the Academy Award®-winning short Trevor, which inspired The Trevor Project, a leading national nonprofit focused on LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention.
Kim earned a master's degree in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and resides in New York City.
John F. Szabo is the City Librarian of the Los Angeles Public Library, which serves more than four million people—the largest population of any public library in the United States. He oversees the Central Library and 72 branches. Under his leadership, the Library’s major initiatives include those related to immigrant integration and citizenship, civic engagement, digital equity, and lifelong learning. He has expanded the library’s reach into the city’s diverse communities through partnerships with several community-based organizations. He has more than 30 years of leadership experience in public libraries, previously serving as the director of four libraries including the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System. Recognizing his “genuine love of community” and how he has aligned library services with the city’s priorities, John was named Library Journal’s 2025 Librarian of the Year.
Taylor Dwyer is Curator of Feuchtwanger Memorial Library at the University of Southern California, where she manages the rare book and archival collection of Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger, German exile collections, and Holocaust and genocide materials. She provides a range of library services including reference, instruction, exhibitions, and academic programming. She completed her undergraduate degree in History at Chapman University, and her Master of Library and Information Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Nikki High is the founder and owner of Octavia’s Bookshelf in Pasadena, California. As an early reader, Nikki has always found safety in books, and her passion for books and storytelling continued to grow throughout her life. It is with this passion in mind and Nikki’s desire to create a literary and creative space she longed for as a child, Nikki opened the doors to Octavia’s Bookshelf on February 18, 2023. Octavia’s Bookshelf offers a highly curated selection of books across all genres written by BIPOC authors. When Nikki isn’t at the bookstore, you can find her somewhere reading (anywhere, really), working on a craft project, or hanging out with her husband and dogs, Freddie and Dayveon.
Partner
Humanism in the Age of Algorithms: AI, Trust, and Public Storytelling
Thomas Mann House
Language: English ・ By Invitation Only
Info
Join us in the living room of the Thomas Mann House for a conversation on Humanism in the Age of Algorithms on the occasion of the 2026 L.A. Tech Week! Co-organized by SAP Labs U.S., the German American Chamber of Commerce West and the Thomas Mann House Los Angeles, this event brings together Thomas Mann Fellow Miriam Meckel (Professor of Communication management and technologies and co-founder of ada Learning GmbH), Doug McLennan (Director of US RAO AI & Creativity Policy Observatory), Jodie Hopperton (Media executive and lead of the INMA Product & Tech Initiative) and Léa Steinacker (Social scientist and entrepreneur) to discuss the relationship between AI, journalism, and the future of storytelling.
The information environment shapes what democratic societies can know about themselves and who decides what counts as real. Each generation has had to answer the same question: who is responsible for the integrity of public knowledge? The event asks that question in its current form. Generative AI has collapsed the cost of producing plausible content across newsrooms, documentary, and entertainment, shifting the bottleneck from production to verification and trust. As newsrooms, broadcasters, platforms, and creative industries work out what responsible AI looks like in practice, what is Europe's contribution — and what does serious transatlantic partnership require?
Participants
Miriam Meckel is a full professor at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, specializing in communication management and technologies and co-founder of ada Learning GmbH. She has extensive experience in science, journalism, and politics, including as Harvard Fellow, editor-in-chief of WirtschaftsWoche, and State Secretary for Media and International Affairs in North Rhine-Westphalia. Her research focuses on technological transformation and innovation. She publishes widely both academically and journalistically. She is a 2026 Thomas Mann Fellow.
Douglas McLennan is the founder and editor of ArtsJournal. ArtsJournal is a curated conversation about culture: 26 years of gathering the most significant writing about culture and putting it in dialogue with itself. He is also the co-founder and editor of Post Alley, a Seattle-based writers’ collective and experiment in pluralist civic journalism. McLennan’s current work centers on how AI is reshaping creativity, authorship, and the policy frameworks that govern them. He directs the US RAO AI & Creativity Policy Observatory, tracking legislation, litigation, and institutional response across the creative sector, and consults with arts organizations on business model evolution at a moment when the structures built to support creative work are badly out of sync with current conditions. Originally a musician, McLennan holds a Master's degree from Juilliard in piano. Before founding ArtsJournal, he worked as a music critic and arts journalist, as music critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and contributing to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Times, among other publications. He was Director of the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, and taught for eight years and developed arts journalism programs with Sasha Anawalt at USC. He helped produce a four-year orchestra festival at Carnegie Hall and was strategic advisor to the Ojai Music Festival.
Dr. Léa Steinacker is a social scientist and entrepreneur, who researches, teaches, and speaks about the intersection of technology with people, organizations, and the planet. She is the CEO of GaiaLogic AG, serves on the Board of Directors of Weleda AG and is a lecturer at the University of St. Gallen. Léa previously co-founded ada Learning, an upskilling and transformation company for the age of AI, and co-wrote the bestseller "Everything Everywhere All At Once: How AI Impacts Our World". She holds degrees from Princeton University, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the University of St. Gallen.
Jodie Hopperton is a British American media executive based in Los Angeles, specializing in the intersection of product, technology, and news media. As the lead of the INMA Product & Tech Initiative, she explores how media organizations can leverage product thinking to drive growth, enhance customer experiences, and navigate the rapidly evolving AI ecosystem. Across her 20 years of international experience she has also lived in Paris, Madrid, and London and held leadership roles spanning technology startups and major media brands, including Director, EMEA Syndication & Licensing at The New York Times and Consultant COO at Global Editors Network. A sought-after speaker and moderator, Jodie is known for her engaging, insightful, and dynamic stage presence. With infectious enthusiasm, she brings energy and expertise to global conferences, leading discussions on AI, product strategy, and the future of news media, while inspiring audiences with her deep industry knowledge and global perspective.
Partner
Co-Organized by SAP Labs U.S., German American Chamber of Commerce West and the Thomas Mann House Los Angeles as part of L.A Tech Week.
Exhibition "Democracy Will Win!" at Utah State University
Utah State University
Information
Join the Department of World Languages & Cultures at Utah State University for the traveling exhibition "Thomas Mann: Democracy Will Win!"
The exhibition commemorates the series of lecture tours that the Nobel Laureate conducted throughout the Unites States from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s. The first of these tours began at Northwestern University, where more than 4000 people came to hear him speak about the fundamental reasons for liberal democracy. “It is a terrible spectacle when the irrational becomes popular,” Mann said in a speech at the Library of Congress in 1943, and he drew on his considerable powers of thought and expression to counter the sources of this spectacle through his confident motto: “Democracy will win.”
The like-named exhibit is divided into two parts: the first charts the changes in Mann’s political views, while the second connects Mann’s lectures tours to current political situations in both Europe and the United States.
Partner
The traveling exhibition Thomas Mann: Democracy Will Win! is a collaboration between the Department of World Languages & Cultures at the Utah State University, and the Thomas Mann House Los Angeles.
Whom Do Museums Serve?
Thomas Mann House
Language: English・By Invitation Only
Info
Participants
Joan Weinstein is Vice President, Program Planning at Getty. She was previously Director of the Getty Foundation, where she was responsible for strategic grant initiatives internationally related to museum practice, art history, and conservation. In 2010, she co-created PST ART, Getty’s region-wide art experience involving dozens of cultural organizations throughout Southern California and directed the project through its first three iterations. She led the $40 million LA Arts Recovery Fund during the pandemic and the LA Fire Relief Fund for artists and arts workers following the 2025 fires. Weinstein began her career as a professor of art history at the University of Pittsburgh and is the author of several books and numerous articles on the history of modern art in Weimar Germany. She holds a PhD in the history of art from the University of California, Los Angeles, and studied at the Phillips-Universität Marburg.
Kia Vahland has been an editor at the Süddeutsche Zeitung since 2008, where she was head of the art section until 2017 and co-founded the SZ opinion section in 2018. Previously, she worked as an editor for the magazine Art and the ZDF program “Willemsens Woche.” Vahland is a columnist for Radio Bremen and the Swiss magazine Republik, and has written many nonfiction books on art and history. She was a fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin and teaches at LMU Munich since 2010.
Erin Harkey is CEO of Americans for the Arts, where she drives the organization’s mission to advance the people, organizations, and systems supporting arts and culture across America through advocacy, research, and national convening. With more than 20 years of experience at the intersection of arts, public policy, and community development, she has built a career focused on strengthening the role of arts and culture in civic life. Prior to joining Americans for the Arts, Harkey served as Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, following leadership roles as First Deputy Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner for Programming. She also served as Senior Policy Advisor for Arts and Culture in the Mayor’s Office, advising on cultural policy and strategy across government in Chicago.
