About us
Profs and Pints (https://www.profsandpints.com ) brings professors and other college instructors into bars, cafes, and other venues to give fascinating talks or to conduct instructive workshops. They cover a wide range of subjects, including history, politics, popular culture, horticulture, literature, creative writing, and personal finance. Anyone interested in learning and in meeting people with similar interests should join. Lectures are structured to allow at least a half hour for questions and an additional hour for audience members to meet each other. Admission to Profs and Pints events requires the purchase of tickets, either in advance (through the ticket link provided in event descriptions) or at the door to the venue. Many events sell out in advance. Your indication on Meetup of your intent to attend an event constitutes neither a reservation nor payment for that event.
Although Profs and Pints has a social mission--expanding access to higher learning while offering college instructors a new income source--it is NOT a 501c3. It was established as a for-profit company in hopes that, by developing a profitable business model, it would be able to spread to other communities much more quickly than a nonprofit dependent on philanthropic support. That said, it is welcoming partners and collaborators as it seeks to build up audiences and spread to new cities. For more information email profsandpints@hotmail.com.
Thank you for your interest in Profs and Pints.
Regards,
Peter Schmidt
Upcoming events
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Profs & Pints Annapolis: How Ancient Athens Restored Democracy
Graduate by Hilton Annapolis, 126 West St, Annapolis, MD 21401, USA, Annapolis, MD, USProfs and Pints Annapolis presents: “How Ancient Athens Restored Democracy,” on lessons to be learned from an overthrow of tyrants in 403 B.C., with Nicholas D. Cross, assistant professor of history at the United States Naval Academy and author of The Roots of Cooperation: Constructing Interstate Alliances in Ancient Greece.
[Tickets must be purchased online, with processing fees and sales tax added, at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/ancient-athens-restored-democracy .]
The defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War led to its democracy being replaced by the Thirty Tyrants, an oligarchic regime that consolidated power through executions and political repression. Democratic exiles managed to organize resistance, defeat the oligarchic forces, and return to Athens to restore democratic government, but then faced the far more challenging task of reconciling a community torn apart by political divisions.
The restorers of Athenian democracy grappled with a question that often arises in periods of political upheaval: Can a deeply divided community ever overcome its past and build a shared future? Learn how they managed to bring about such an outcome in a talk that holds hopeful lessons for our own time.
The speaker, Dr. Nicholas Cross, teaches the history of ancient Greece and Rome and is the author of a forthcoming biography of the leader of democratic resistance to the Thirty Tyrants, Thrasybulus of Steiria: An Athenian Hero?
He’ll describe how the settlement that followed the civil war included an amnesty designed to prevent cycles of retaliation, but Athens nonetheless remained deeply divided. Among those who had to find a way to live together once more were former democrats, supporters of oligarchy, and citizens such as Socrates whose conduct during the regime was open to question.
Democracy’s return was not a straightforward triumph. It instead involved dealing with tensions and making political decisions intended to enable peaceful coexistence possible. The Athenians had to balance both accountability with reconciliation and the desire for revenge with the need for lasting political stability.
The events of 403 BC remind us that rebuilding a divided society requires not only restoring political institutions but also reviving trust and learning to coexist with former adversaries. The lessons they learned in the process remain relevant nearly 2500 years later. (Advance tickets: $13.50. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 4 pm and the talk starts at 5:30 pm.)
Image: The Acropolis at Athens as painted by Leo von Klenze in 1846 (Neue Pinakothek museum / Wikimedia Commons).
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Past events
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