Jon Meacham

Of all the challenges facing the United States — racial justice, the coronavirus pandemic, the pandemic-caused economic hardship, the growing divide between rich and poor — the biggest is what historian Jon Meacham called the “epistemological crisis.”

Meacham, the featured speaker at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s January 28 annual “Supreme Evening” (virtual this year), explained that this crisis “is the idea you don’t confront reality, but if you find it inconvenient, you simply deny it and invent another.