Past Events

Join us on February 6, 2024 at 4:00pm as Professor Beth Rabinowitz will discuss her recent book, "Defensive Nationalism: Explaining the Rise of Populism and Fascism in the 21st Century," and the powerful thesis that the irrationalism and hatred that marked the early 20th century has resurged in the 21st. In turn, our response to violent instability and fracture requires a clear-eyed understanding of the explosive politics of both eras.

Please join us on January 19, 2024 for an Authors Meet Critics panel on The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall, by Andrew Garrett, Professor of Linguistics and the Nadine M. Tang and Bruce L. Smith Professor of Cross-Cultural Social Sciences in the Department of Linguistics at UC Berkeley. Professor Garrett will be joined in conversation by James Clifford, Professor Emeritus at UC Santa Cruz; William Hanks, Berkeley Distinguished Chair Professor in Linguistic Anthropology; and Julian Lang (Karuk/Wiyot), a storyteller, poet, artist, graphic designer, and writer, and author of Ararapikva: Karuk Indian Literature from Northwest California. Leanne Hinton, Professor Emerita of Linguistics at UC Berkeley, will moderate.

How do algorithmic surveillance tools piloted by the police function as technology experiments on communities? Join us on Thursday, December 7 at 12pm for a talk entitled "Police Technology Experiements," by Elizabeth Joh, the Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at UC Davis.

Presented by the Program in Critical Theory, the Series in Black / Africana Critical Theory stages a slow sequence of conversations across Africana Studies, Black Study, and Critical Theory. Rather than a form of triangulation that aims at resolution, the series stays with tension across these lines of thought, in provisional forms of critical contemplation that might help us meet our current condition. This seminar centers on Riotous Deathscapes, by Hugo ka Canham, Professor at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences, University of South Africa.

While the last 20 years have marked a significant change in increased acceptance of varied gender expressions and sexual orientations, these changes haven’t made the importance of gender and sexuality as concepts disappear. If anything, they’ve become more relevant for understanding the world today. This Matrix on Point panel will bring together scholars from the fields of sociology, ethnic studies, and political science for a discussion of gender and sexuality through the lens of such topics as medicine, transnational migration, and marriage. 

Please join us on Tuesday, November 28 at 12pm Pacific for an in-person "Authors Meet Critics" panel featuring Gramsci at Sea, by Sharad Chari, Associate Professor in Geography and Co-Director of Critical Theory at UC Berkeley. Professor Chari will be joined in conversation by Leslie Salzinger, Associate Professor and Chair of Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley, and Colleen Lye, Associate Professor of English at UC Berkeley. The panel will be moderated by James Vernon, Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor of History at UC Berkeley.

Please join us on November 15 at 5:00pm for a talk by Nivedita Menon, Professor at Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Professor Menon will discuss her book, Secularism as Misdirection: Critical Thought from the Global South, and will be joined in conversation by Poulomi Saha, co-director of the Program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley.

Register to join us in person for an Authors Meet Critics panel on "Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights," by Dylan Penningroth, Professor of Law and Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of History at UC Berkeley, and Associate Dean, Program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy / Legal Studies at Berkeley Law. With Ula Yvette Taylor, Professor and 1960 Chair of Undergraduate Education in the UC Berkeley Department of African American Studies and African Diaspora Studies; and Eric Schickler, Professor, Jeffrey & Ashley McDermott Endowed Chair in the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science at UC Berkeley.

Join us on October 31, 2023 as a group of panelists will discuss the current state of commercial real estate in San Francisco — and what lies ahead. Panelists include Ted Egan, Chief Economist of the City and County of San Francisco; Nicholas Bloom, the William Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University; and Nancy Wallace, the Lisle and Roslyn Payne Chair in Real Estate Capital Markets at Berkeley Haas. Amir Kermani, Associate Professor of Finance and Real Estate at the Haas School of Business and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, will moderate.

Register to attend a mini-conference focused on the legacy and impact of W.E.B. Du Bois in the field of sociology, with two panels and a keynote presentation by José Itzigsohn, Professor of Sociology, Brown University.

Register to attend an Authors Meet Critics panel on the book "Reactionary Mathematics: A Genealogy of Purity," by Massimo Mazzotti, Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of History and the Thomas M. Siebel Presidential Chair in the History of Science. Professor Mazzotti will be joined in conversation by Matthew L. Jones, the Smith Family Professor of History at Princeton University, and David Bates, Professor of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. Thomas Laqueur, the Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley, will moderate.

Please join us fon October 17 for a talk by Vincent Bevins, an award-winning journalist and correspondent, focused on his new book, "If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution." The panel will be moderated by Daniel Aldana Cohen, Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley and Director of the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative, or (SC)2.