Office of Public Lectures @ UW

In recent years, American democracy has bent but not broken. What are the threats facing American democracy, and what are its sources of resilience? In this talk, Dr. Jake Grumbach will investigate trends in three areas of American democracy: the rule of law, majority rule, and political equality. Each of these areas is a crucial component for a political system of the people, by t

A panel discission on what keeps communities safe, among ACLU of Washington policy experts and experts in restorative justice and violence prevention who have been directly impacted by the criminal legal system. For decades, Washington state has invested in increasingly harsher punishments as the solution to public safety. This investment has devastated communities, particularly co

A moderated conversation between Senior Fellow for Public Practice at Braver Angels and author of “I Never Thought of it That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times“, Mónica Guzmán and writer, broadcaster, and interviewer, Steve Scher. Let’s learn together how to remain curious and courageous during our upcoming presidential election

In this talk, on October 28, 2024, Dr. Priya Donti, Assistant Professor and the Silverman (1968) Family Career Development Professor at MIT EECS and LIDS, will explore AI’s multi-faceted relationship with climate change. This discussion will cover how researchers, practitioners, and policymakers can work together to better align the use of AI with climate change.

The UW Office of Public Lectures presents Generative Misinformation with Professor Jevin West. Addressing misinformation is one of society’s grand challenges. In so doing, we might have a chance at the other grand challenges—preventing the next pandemic, preserving our planet, and protecting democracy. Humans, armed and amplified with social media, have been the primary produce

Jaipreet Virdi, scholar activist and Associate Professor at the University of Delaware and author of “Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History” Dr. Virdi asks us to consider how being disabled changes the way people view the world and the things they create. Through these perspectives, she invites alternative approaches for remaking crip worlds, one in which disabled people

Jake Grumbach is an associate professor of political science at the University of Washington who focuses on political economy of U.S. Democracy. In the first of a two- part series, he will discuss the current crisis in American democracy and how national conflicts of race, labor, and democracy are playing out in state governments.

The notion that race is a social construct, rather than an objective physical reality, is widely accepted – except in areas that include biomedical research, debates about transracial identities, and sports. In this talk, Ann Morning will dissect the reasons we hold firmly to the 18th-century understanding of race in these domains.

In this talk, Diane Ravitch, Founder and President of the Network for Public Education, shares her thoughts on public education, including why schools should not operate like businesses and how citizens can organize to defend public schools against privatization. This lecture was originally presented on April 24, 2018.

Click here for lecture transcript: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11KJoJca7QWFkk43ptKJ_VOJ1rthvquAH/view?usp=sharing The world is awash in bullshit. Pandering politicians, winking advertisers, startup soothsayers, television “experts”, and even some scientists use the news media to promulgate half-truths, misrepresentations and sometimes outright lies. In this talk, UW profess