Lectures on Tap - "How a Boston Prodigy Gave Us the Right to Privacy"
About this Event
📍 Location: Exact address given in confirmation email
🧠 Lecture: "How a Boston Prodigy Gave Us the Right to Privacy"
🎤 Speaker: Professor Dan Breen
He was reading the New York Times before his second birthday, and by three he was teaching himself Latin and Greek. There had never been a child prodigy quite like William James Sidis, and the public was spellbound. But fame came at a cost. As Sidis grew older, he longed for anonymity and a quiet life in Boston’s South End—until The New Yorker came calling.
Did the press have the right to expose his private life, or did this former prodigy have the right to be left alone—even to be forgotten? In 1940, a federal court in Manhattan grappled with these questions, shaping, for better or worse, our modern understanding of the Right to Privacy.
Professor Dan Breen, a Professor of Legal Studies at Brandeis University, will guide us through this remarkable story and its lasting legal and cultural consequences. His book on the Public Monuments of Boston is scheduled for publication in Fall 2027.
Get a drink, connect, and learn at Lectures on Tap! 🙌
Agenda
6:30 PM – Doors open: find a seat (open seating!), order food & drinks, and expect a bar line—arriving early is key.
6:55 PM – Host introduction
7:00 PM – Lecture begins
7:45 PM – Audience Q&A
8:00 PM – Have 1:1 time with the speaker, mingle with fellow guests, and order another round
8:30 PM – Wrap up.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 39.19
