Past Events

Building a new state is hard. A governing apparatus must be built, a populace convinced (not always willingly!) and a sense of what the state is and how it should act must make it intelligible to both its agents and citizens or subjects. How a state is built shapes its future – and is shaped by the past. Professor Strauss shows how somewhat similar challenges and inherited understandings led to both commonalities and differences in how authority was consolidated on both sides of the Straits. That has lessons for understanding both China and state-building.

We’re throwing it back to the totally sweet decade of the 1990s! Whether you remember wearing toe rings and pagers or jamming out to alternative rock bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Buffalo Tom, BostonTalks takes you down memory lane—and dives a little deeper too. Featuring: Kathleen McDermott, Assistant Professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design; Bill Janovitz, Guitarist, singer and songwriter in the band Buffalo Tom; and Donna Halper, PhD., Associate professor of communication and media studies at Lesley University. Image: Pexels.com

Meet three women writers whose talents go far beyond the page and into singing/songwriting, carpentry and the study of dead languages. In this talk for Speculative Boston, C.S.E. Cooney, Nina MacLaughlin and Sonya Taaffe discuss what it means to reimagine fantasy fiction. Image: William Etty (1787–1849), The Sirens and Ulysses (c 1837), oil on canvas, 297 x 442.5 cm, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, England. Wikimedia Commons.

Artists Irene Ferri and Jennifer Maestre show their work using wood and color pencils to create intricate assemblages. They discuss their career paths, their trajectory to collaboration, and what projects are ahead together and individually. Image courtesy of Artisans Asylum

**Yochai Benkler** is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Since the 1990s he has played a role in characterizing the role of information commons and decentralized collaboration to innovation, information production, and freedom in the networked economy and society. He discusses political misinformation in the news media and considers the impacts of our reaction to misinformation on our Democracy. Image: Pexels.com

Data Scientist Michael Schmidt and DataRobot's VP of Revenue Ben Solari talk with WGBH producer Arjun Singh about artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science and how these emerging technologies shape the world around us. Atwood’s Interview Series is hosted by Arjun Singh and spotlights a wide array of guests, including journalists, authors, local politicians, artists, musicians and specialists of all sorts. Image: Pexels.com

Almost every nation has enacted laws criminalizing human trafficking, and international organizations, governments, and NGOs sponsor a large variety of projects to curb trafficking and slavery. Billions of dollars have been allocated to these efforts. What is the international community doing to combat slavery and trafficking? What are the experiences like for those being trafficked? Image: Courtesy of [WikiMedia Commons](http://https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trafficking_of_women,_children_and_men_routes.svg)

Author and immigration lawyer Professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández in discussion about his book "Migrating to Prison: America's Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants," which levels an attack on America's immigration detention policy. His talk is followed by a panel discussion with psycotherapist Greta Bro, immigration lawyer Leslie Ditrani, and researcher for Refugee and Migrant Rights, Denise Bell. Image: Book Cover

Authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman join Carol Rose, executive director of ACLU Massachusetss, to discuss their compliation of essays,"Fight of the Century", featuring works by influential writers including Jennifer Egan, Neil Gaiman, Marlon James, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Salman Rushdie, Jesmyn Ward, and more, each writing about a landmark ACLU case. In response to the ["Palmer Raids"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids), part of the Red Scare in the U.S. after World War I when many were arrested without warrants and immigrants were targeted without regard to constitutional protections, a small group opposed to the actions formed the [American Civil Liberties Union](https://www.aclu.org/about/aclu-history). In May, 1920, they published their "Report Upon the Illegal Practices of the United States Department of Justice". This 2020 book of essays is published in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the organization.

Rev. Dr. Yvette Flunder is a San Francisco native and pioneer behind the founding of the City of Refuge United Church of Christ in 1991. Bishop Flunder explores the meaning of eros in humanity and chastises the church for avoiding the teaching of sexuality, even avoiding practices that could help young people make informed choices. Image: Pexels.com & Boston University