Historian, RBG Expert Visits History Classes Virtually

Editor’s note: special thanks to the Sonoma Valley Author’s festival for providing SVHS with Jeffrey Rosen’s speaker session and 300 copies of the book titled RBG: Life, Love, Liberty, Law. Also a shout out to Janet Hansen, librarian and Co-English department chair for initiating the experience for her SVHS student community.   

Just months after the news of the death of revered Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg reached the public, renowned historian Jeffrey Rosen virtually visited SVHS in an online assembly. Rosen is the author of the 2019 bestseller Conversations with RBG; Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law, and a distinguished expert on the Harvard Law School graduate.

Rosen felt the need to put Ginsburg’s thoughts and experiences into words because it is a “blessing” to have her “beautiful words preserved” after her unfortunate passing earlier this year.

 Mr. Gibson, 11th grade US History teacher, worked to prepare his students for author Jeffrey Rosen’s Zoom call with SVHS. He explained, “I had my classes read chapter six of the book which was about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s very close friendship with Justice Antonin Scalia.”

Gibson specifically chose this chapter because he wanted to showcase how “Scalia and RBG were about as politically opposite as it gets, she was very liberal and he very conservative.”

Juniors and seniors attended the 11:00 Zoom meeting on December 1. The meeting lasted until lunchtime, with Rosen packing the hour-long monologue with anecdotes, quotes, and even advice straight from Justice Ginsburg herself. Her main advice to high schoolers across the country was “with enough discipline and hard work, you can achieve your dreams and fulfill your talents.”

Rosen insisted that he felt blessed to be able to talk to students such as ourselves, calling it “a unique opportunity to bring her light to the world.”