Dear Readers, Friends, and Supporters,

At long last, I am thrilled to share with you the news that so many of you have been waiting for: Lapham’s Quarterly will return in 2025.

After a necessary pause to reflect, rebuild, and determine the best way forward, we can finally announce that Lapham’s Quarterly has found a new and distinguished home: Bard College’s Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities. With Bard’s deep commitment to the humanities and the Hannah Arendt Center’s mission of fostering bold, independent inquiry, there could be no better place for the next chapter of this publication. (Read the official press release here.)

To all of you who wrote, donated, waited, and believed—this moment belongs to you, too.

I never had the privilege of working alongside Lewis. He was already working remotely by the time I joined the magazine in the fall of 2023. But we spoke often by phone, each conversation filled with possibilities for the stabilization and future of the Quarterly. His voice remained strong, determined, coming through loud and clear, a flood of ideas and connections each time we spoke. Even after he’d moved to Rome to live with his wife and daughter and grandchildren, he was resilient, hopeful.

His optimism is what I will remember most about those calls. Never despair. It’s what fueled my desire to help navigate a way forward through the magazine’s hiatus in 2024. I heard it in his voice when he approved the sale of his private letters to Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library last summer: “I’m happy they’ll continue to reside in New York City.” He was excited to learn about Hawthornden Foundation’s interest in preserving the Quarterly’s office, including his desk and library: “Hawthornden is the perfect custodian. My parents were friends with Drue Heinz.” (Hawthornden’s founder). 

His hope for a future for the Quarterly was never more present than when we began negotiations for a new partnership with Bard College last spring. When I described to him how the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics & Humanities, which is housed at Bard, was interested in acquiring the magazine and its assets, his voice carried an unmistakable note of conviction: “That’s exactly where it belongs.”

And also: “You know I gave the keynote address there in 2011.” (Watch it here.)

For Lewis, Bard College represented a kind of intellectual homecoming. A place where ideas mattered, where history was engaged, where the mission of Lapham’s Quarterly—to place the past in conversation with the present—would not only be safeguarded but expanded. He saw in Bard’s faculty, in the Hannah Arendt Center’s fearless pursuit of the humanities, in its Prison Initiative, a continuum of the work he had spent his life championing. And now, with Bard’s stewardship in place, his vision lives on.

What comes next?

The journey begins with the 2025 release of our long-awaited issue, “Energy,” which will feature the last Preamble that Lewis wrote before his passing. It will mark the end of an era, but also a powerful beginning.

And, as we move forward, we ask for your continued support. This transition will take time, effort, and resources. Bard College will serve as our new fiscal sponsor, meaning all donations in support of the Quarterly will be tax-deductible. If you believe, as we do, that Lapham’s Quarterly still has an essential role to play in our world, we ask you to consider making a gift to help us build this next iteration and help us move our operations to Bard’s campus.

For over a year now, you have waited patiently for an update. Today, we can say with certainty: your patience has paid off.

With your support, and with the banners of Lewis’ vision now carried by longtime Quarterly contributors, including Francine Prose, Wyatt Mason, and many others, we are ready to build something extraordinary.

Thank you for standing with us. Thank you for believing in this work.

The next chapter begins now.

With gratitude,

Paul W. Morris
Publisher and Executive Director
Lapham’s Quarterly
American Agora Foundation