When the Dutch founded the city of New Amsterdam, at the tip of Manhattan Island, they brought three elements that would shape the city of New York: tolerance, trade, and water management. Four hundred years later, these issues are confounding the modern world. Questions of tolerance, race, and immigration roil our politics. Rampant inequality points to the need to make capitalism work for all. Climate change demands drastic action.

Russell Shorto, in his inaugural talk as executive director of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Institute for New York City History, Politics, and Community Activism, argues that both the roots of these dilemmas and their solutions lie in New York’s past. Join us as he takes us back and makes New Amsterdam new again.