Past Events

Please join us on October 4, 2023 from 4:00pm-6:00pm for a talk by Michèle Lamont, author of "Seeing Others: How Recognition Works — and How It Can Heal a Divided World." Lamont is a Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, where she is also the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies. Co-sponsored by Berkeley Law, the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, the Berkeley Immigration and Migration Initiative (BIMI), and the Center for Race & Gender. 

This talk will feature Peter Spiegler, Senior Researcher at The New Institute of Political Economy, celebrating the launch of Spiegler's new report, “Marketcrafting" (co-authored with Chris Hughes), which argues for a specifically progressive marketcrafting vision that can achieve major policy goals in a just and equitable manner while also minimizing inflationary impacts.

In this Matrix on Point panel, experts will discuss current events in light of Iran’s history and the significance of gender in contemporary protest movements. Panelists include Sholeh Asgary, an interdisciplinary artist and lecturer at UC Berkeley, and Minoo Moallem, Professor of Gender and Women's Studies. Moderated by Cihan Tuğal, Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley. Register to attend.

The Biden administration has resurrected industrial policy with a vengeance, reviving old intellectual debates about the virtues and vices of industrial policy and sparking new ones. This program brings together scholarly debates about industrial policy with a discussion of the practical challenges of designing and implementing industrial policy in the United States. Register to attend.

This talk will feature Zachary Bleemer, Assistant Professor of Economics at Princeton University, who co-authored a new book, "Metrics That Matter: Counting What's Really Important to College Students," that explores popular metrics used by future and current college students, with chapters focusing on colleges’ return on investment, university rankings, average student debt, average wages by college major, and more. Register to attend.

Note the talk scheduled for September 7 has been POSTPONED. You can still register to join us for a future talk by Jedediah Purdy, the Raphael Lemkin Professor of Law at Duke Law School.

In this talk, Andrej Krickovic, Associate Professor of International Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, in Suzhou, China, will argue that Russia’s assertive and aggressive international behavior is motivated and shaped by its status concerns as a declining power. Russia’s leaders are determined to arrest Russia’s decline and preserve its status as a great power in the international system and are prepared to adopt the most risky, aggressive, and destabilizing foreign policies to achieve this end.

Since Greek antiquity, there have been two fundamentally different conceptualizations of the search for truth. On the one hand, platonic politics proposed to control the city by subjecting political expression to the philosophical concept. On the other hand, the rhetorical tradition opposed the logocratic and universal claim of philosophy, in the name of the diversity […]

Expropriation — the seizing of property by a state for public use — is seeing an upsurge in interest as a possible response to a number of pressing global challenges, including the climate crisis, outdated infrastructure, new technologies, and renewed commitments to economic sovereignty. This panel will bring together experts from diverse regions to discuss the use of expropriation for the common good in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Presented as part of the UC Berkeley Department of Geography's Spring 2023 Colloquia Series, this talk will feature Orlando Patterson, John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, presenting "The Confounding Island: Jamaica and the Postcolonial Predicament."

Join us for a lunchtime roundtable conversation with Orlando Patterson focused on "The Paradox of Freedom", an interview focused on Patterson's childhood, education, public service, and books. Ricarda Hammer, incoming Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley, and Daniela Cammack, Assistant Professor of Political Science (political theory), will kick off the conversation, which will be moderated by Caitlin Rosenthal, Associate Professor of History. We encourage graduate students to attend this event.

Please join us on May 1 at 4pm for a Matrix Distinguished Lecture by Orlando Patterson, John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. The title of Professor Patterson's lecture will be “Slavery and Genocide: The U.S, Jamaica and the Historical Sociology of Evil.” Stephen Best, Professor of English at UC Berkeley and Director of the Townsend Center for the Humanities, will be the discussant.