Recorded on May 2, 2023 at UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix, this video features a roundtable conversation with Orlando Patterson, John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, focused on The Paradox of Freedom, an interview with Patterson by David Scott, originally published in Small Axe in 2013. The interview has recently been published by Wiley as a book. In their interview, Scott and Patterson discussed the sociologist and novelist’s childhood, education, public service,...

Recorded on May 1, 2023, this episode of the Matrix Podcast features a lecture by Orlando Patterson, John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, entitled “Slavery and Genocide: The U.S, Jamaica and the Historical Sociology of Evil.” Presented as the Matrix Distinguished Lecture, the lecture was presented at Social Science Matrix, an interdisciplinary center at the University of California, Berkeley. Stephen Best, Professor of English at UC Berkeley and Director of the Townsend...

Recorded on February 22, 2023, this podcast features a lecture by Professor Kadji Amin, Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Emory University. In this talk, “Training Bourgeois Selves: Magnus Hirschfeld and the Subsumption of Pederasty,” Amin discusses a key architect of Modern Sexuality, the German Jewish homosexual sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld. Amin argues that Hirschfeld’s work allows us to track the process by which the bourgeois Western notion of sexuality as...

Recorded on March 22, 2023, this talk — "The Modern American Industrial Strategy: Building a Clean Energy Economy from the Bottom Up and Middle Out" — features Heather Boushey, a member of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers and Chief Economist to the Invest in America Cabinet. Boushey is co-founder of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, where she was President and CEO from 2013-2020. She previously served as chief economist for Secretary Clinton’s 2016 transition team and...

Recorded on March 23, 2023, this talk featured Phil Gorski, Frederick and Laura Goff Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at Yale University, discussing his new book (co-authored with Samuel Perry), The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to Democracy. The respondent was David Hollinger, Preston Hotchkis Professor Emeritus of History at UC Berkeley. Carolyn Chen, Co-Director of the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion and Professor of Ethnic Studies,...

How do the wealthy maintain their wealth through tax havens, and what can we learn about these opaque practices? Recorded on April 3, 2023, this panel featured experts explaining aspects of the global ecosystem of tax avoidance, including how corporations and individuals move across multiple legal jurisdictions to maintain wealth and avoid paying taxes. The panel included Duncan Wigan, Professor with Special Responsibilities in the Department of Organization at Copenhagen Business School;...

Recorded on March 8, 2023, this video features a lecture by Jo Guldi, Professor of History and Practicing Data Scientist at Southern Methodist University. Professor Guldi’s lecture was entitled “Towards a Practice of Text-Mining to Understand Change Over Historical Time: The Persistence of Memory in British Parliamentary Debates in the Nineteenth Century.” Co-sponsored by Social Science Matrix, the UC Berkeley Department of History, and D-Lab, this talk was presented as part of the Social...

Most nations in Asia, Latin America, and Africa experienced some form of “land reform” in the 20th century. But what is land reform? In her book, The Long Land War: The Global Struggle for Occupancy Rights, Professor Jo Guldi approaches the problem from the point of view of Britain’s disintegrating empire. She makes the case that land reform movements originated as an argument about reparations for the experience of colonization, and that they were championed by a set of leading...

The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have reshaped global geopolitics, trade, and security. How will these changes affect the relationship between the US and China, Europe, and the Global South? How will they impact US firms operating globally, and how might foreign leaders — and notably the Chinese leadership — respond? Recorded on February 16, 2023, this panel discussion featured a group of distinguished scholars addressing these questions, and the possible implications for the global...

Misinformation and conspiracy theories have become a central feature of modern life, but they have a long history that have served to justify surveillance and prosecution of marginalized groups. In this Matrix on Point panel, recorded on March 15, 2023, a group of scholars who study these histories discussed how misinformation circulates, and the effects of such myths and stories on society. The panel featured Timothy R. Tangherlini, Professor in the Scandinavian Department and Director of...

Recorded on March 7, 2023 at UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix, this  Authors Meet Critics panel focused on To Defend This Sunrise: Black Women’s Activism and the Authoritarian Turn in Nicaragua, by Courtney Desiree Morris, Assistant Professor and Vice Chair of Research in Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley. Morris was joined in conversation by Tianna Paschel, Associate Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of African American Studies. The panel was moderated by Lok Siu, Chair of...

Recorded on March 6, 2023 at UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix, this "Authors Meet Critics" panel focused on Cooperating with the Colossus: A Social and Political History of US Military Bases in World War II Latin America, by Rebecca Herman, Assistant Professor of History at UC Berkeley. The recording also features a response by Julio Moreno, Professor of History at the University of San Francisco, and and José Juan Pérez Meléndez, Assistant Professor in Latin American and Caribbean...

On February 15, 2023, Social Science Matrix was honored to host Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, for a Matrix Distinguished Lecture entitled "Reimagining Global Integration." Abstract Whether they live in vast cities or rural villages, people in virtually every corner of the world have experienced enormous growth in cross-border economic, political, and social connections since World War II. This latest chapter in the story of...

On February 1, 2023, Social Science Matrix presented an Authors Meet Critics panel on Microverses: Observations from a Shattered Present, a book by Dylan Riley, Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley. Professor Riley was joined by two discussants: Colleen Lye, Associate Professor of English at UC Berkeley, affiliated with the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory, and Donna Jones, Associate Professor of English at UC Berkeley and Core Faculty for the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory...

This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Adriana D. Kugler, the World Bank Group Executive Director for the United States. Dr. Kugler was appointed by President Biden and confirmed by the Senate in May 2022. She is the first Latinx person and first Jewish woman to be appointed to this position since the foundation of the World Bank in 1944. She is also a proud UC Berkeley alumna who graduated with a PhD in 1997. Prior to joining the WBG Board, Dr. Kugler had a long and...

On November 9, 2022, Social Science Matrix hosted a panel discussion on “Authors Meet Critics” panel discussion on How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea, by Sandra Eder, Associate Professor of History at UC Berkeley. Eder was joined in conversation by Laura Nelson, Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley, and Danya Lagos, Assistant Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology. The panel was moderated by Catherine Ceniza...

In the wake of recent decisions on abortion, First Amendment rights, gun rights, Miranda rights, and jurisdiction over Native American reservations, the Supreme Court today seems particularly out of sync with the American people. In this Matrix on Point panel, a panel of experts from UC Berkeley discussed what these decisions and the conservative turn in the Supreme Court mean for the relationship between the court and the people. Recorded on October 20, 2022, the panel featured Erwin...

Recorded on October 10, 2022, this “Authors Meet Critics” panel focused on the book Voices in the Code: A Story About People, Their Values, and the Algorithm They Made, by David Robinson, a visiting scholar at Social Science Matrix and a member of the faculty at Apple University. Robinson was joined in conversation by Iason Gabriel, a Staff Research Scientist at DeepMind, and Deirdre Mulligan, Professor in the UC Berkeley School of Information. The panel was co-sponsored by the Berkeley...

Presented on October 14, 2022 as part of the Social Science Matrix Authors Meet Critics series, this panel focused on the book Keeping It Unreal: Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics (NYU Press, 2022), by Darieck Scott, Professor of African American Studies at UC Berkeley. Professor Scott was joined in conversation by Ula Taylor, Professor & 1960 Chair of Undergraduate Education in the UC Berkeley Department of African-American Studies and African Diaspora; and Scott Bukatman,...

What role did American social and moral reformers play in managing human migrations? J.T. Jamieson, a Phd Candidate in UC Berkeley’s Department of History, examines how social reformers in the first half of the 19th century sought to control migration and insert their own understandings of morality, social benevolence, and humanitarianism into the lives and experiences of migrants. In so doing, he argues, their reforms frequently perpetuated racial supremacy, religious supremacy, and...

Now more than ever, humanitarianism is being conducted at a distance. As humanitarian efforts shift from in-kind and in-person assistance to cash- and information-based assistance, how does this change what humanitarian work looks like? Recorded on September 26, 2022, this "Matrix on Point" panel featured a group of scholars examining how technology raises new questions about the efficacy of humanitarian interventions, the human rights of recipients, and the broader power relations between...

Recorded on September 30, 2022, this Matrix “Author Meets Critics” panel focused on the book Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley, by Carolyn Chen, Associate Professor in the University of California, Berkeley Department of Ethnic Studies. Work Pray Code explores how tech companies are bringing religion into the workplace in ways that are replacing traditional places of worship, blurring the line between work and religion and transforming the very nature of spiritual...

Monica Ellwood-Lowe is a PhD candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Psychology whose research focuses on differences between outcomes for students of different socioeconomic status, as well as the societal barriers that might hinder student success. Ellwood-Lowe tries to answer such questions as, what skills do children develop when they come from socioeconomically disadvantaged homes, even in the face of societal barriers to success? Do children’s brains simply adapt to their respective...

On this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek spoke with two scholars whose work focuses on explaining how mass incarceration has changed over the last 30 years. Alex Roehrkasse is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Butler University. He studies the production of racial class and gender inequality in the United States through violence and social control. He was previously a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Sociology at Duke University and at the National...

On Friday, September 9, 2022, Matrix hosted an "Authors Meet Critics" panel discussion on the book The Government of Emergency: Vital Systems, Expertise, and the Politics of Security, by Stephen Collier, Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of City and Regional Planning, and Andrew Lakoff, Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California. This new book explores how experts and officials approach challenges like pandemics and cyberattacks as catastrophic risks. The authors...