Past Events

Bishop Karen Oliveto served as senior pastor of the 12,000-member Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco for eight years. She was the first woman to be senior pastor at Glide, the fifth largest United Methodist congregation in the US. Bishop Oliveto has the distinction of being the first openly lesbian bishop in The United Methodist Church. She and her wife, Robin Ridenour, a nurse anesthetist and United Methodist deaconess, were married in 2014. Bishop Oliveto now serves as the leader of 400 churches in the Mountain Sky Area of The United Methodist Church.

Novelist Claire Messud, immigration attorney Susan Church, Microsoft engineer Miguel de Icaza, and WGBH News Senior Editor Peter Kadzis discuss issues from immigration to civil rights to journalism and mass incarceration in the first of a free new speaker series called "Our Path Forward". Moderated by the founder and editor of **[TheEditorial](http://www.theeditorial.com "the Editorial page")**, Heidi Legg, and co-presented by [Cambridge Public Library](https://www.cambridgema.gov/cpl.aspx "CPL website").

Reginald Dwayne Betts transformed himself from a sixteen-year old teen, sentenced to nine-years in prison, into a critically acclaimed writer and student at Yale Law School. In 2016, he was awarded the PEN New England Award for poetry for _Bastards of the Reagan Era_. His memoir,_ A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison,_ is the story of a young man confined in the worst prisons in the state of Virginia, where solitary confinement, horrific conditions, and the constant violence threatened to break his humanity. Instead, Betts used the time to turn himself into a poet, a scholar, and an advocate for the reform of the criminal justice system. Betts will read from his two critically-acclaimed collections of poetry,_ Shahid Reads His Own Palm_ and _Bastards of the Reagan Era,_ and discuss the power of language and examine the important intersection of art and social justice. (Image: [Pixabay](https://pixabay.com/en/typewriter-typing-black-and-white-1627197/ ""))

Emmy Award–winning MSNBC news anchor Chris Hayes, author of the _New York Times_ bestselling book _Twilight of the Elites_, came to Boston for a panel discussion on inequality in America. He was joined at the Old South Church by Emerson College's Jabari Asim and Suffolk University Law School's Frank Rudy Cooper. Anthony Brooks moderated the conversation. In his latest book, _A Colony in a Nation_, Hayes argues that there are really two Americas: a colony and a nation. America likes to tell itself that it inhabits a postracial world, yet nearly every empirical measure—wealth, unemployment, incarceration, school segregation—reveals that racial inequality has barely improved since 1968, when Richard Nixon became our first “law and order” president. Hayes contends our country has fractured in two: the Colony and the Nation. In the Nation, we venerate the law. In the Colony, we obsess over order, fear trumps civil rights, and aggressive policing resembles occupation. A Colony in a Nation explains how a country founded on justice now looks like something uncomfortably close to a police state. How and why did Americans build a system where conditions in Ferguson and West Baltimore mirror those that sparked the American Revolution? Photo: By [California Department of Corrections](http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/News/background_info.html "")

In this original, provocative contribution to the debate over economic inequality, Ganesh Sitaraman argues that a strong and sizable middle class is a prerequisite for America’s constitutional system. For most of Western history, Sitaraman argues, constitutional thinkers assumed economic inequality was inevitable and inescapable—and they designed governments to prevent class divisions from spilling over into class warfare. The American Constitution is different. Compared to Europe and the ancient world, America was a society of almost unprecedented economic equality, and the founding generation saw this equality as essential for the preservation of America’s republic. Over the next two centuries, generations of Americans fought to sustain the economic preconditions for our constitutional system. But today, with economic and political inequality on the rise, Sitaraman says Americans face a choice: Will we accept rising economic inequality and risk oligarchy or will we rebuild the middle class and reclaim our republic? Thumbnail: Charles Booth [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

We’re talking brews: beer, coffee, tea and… music! WGBH’s BostonTalks series connects you with local leaders, stories, trends and each other. Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum’s Josiah George takes us back in time to the days of brewing and throwing tea overboard into the Boston Harbor. Ajiri Tea founder Sara Holby explains how the lives of women and orphans in Kenya are being improved through the tea and coffee that are purchased and brewed in Boston. Adam Ritchie’s band The Lights Out released its album on a can of Aeronaut Brewing Co. beer. That’s right—drink a brew and discover new music at the same time. Adam explains this journey. Matt DeLuca, head brewer at Castle Island Brewing Co., talks about brewing beer and using failure to the company’s advantage. Additional speakers to come. Tweet with Josiah (@bostonteaship), Sara (@ajiritea), Adam (@fontbandit), Matt (@cibrewing) and Edgar B. Herwick, III (@ebherwick3) using #BostonTalks.

Devil rays, also known as mobula rays, are closely related to the more iconic and better known manta rays. In recent decades, all these species have been facing increasing threats driven by unsustainable target and bycatch fisheries, seeking to supply the international demand for their dried gill plates in Chinese medicine. Growing awareness and concerns for the survival of these species resulted in some level of international protection. However, further work is required. Daniel Fernando tells us about his research efforts to better understand these animals and about his work to promote their conservation. Image: Atlantic Mobula Lisbon (CC Wikimedia Commons)

As part of the new exhibit **Highest Heaven,** exploring the cultural and religious world of the Spanish Colonial possessions of the Altiplano (high plains) of South America, WAM hosts a scholarly discussion on Gaspar Miguel de Berrío's painting _Our Lady of Mount Carmel with Bishop Saints._ Rather than group works by media as an introduction to the world of Spanish Colonial art, the exhibition returns the objects' original context as, literally and symbolically, articles of faith. It focuses on the didactic aspects of the collection, especially as they relate to the life of Christ, the Christian religious orders, and the cult of the saints. It explores ways in which such religious art was used in the propagation of Catholic beliefs by use of visual art to illustrate biblical moments in the life of Christ—from the Annunciation and birth to the Crucifixion and Resurrection. Furthermore, it examines visual representations of saints, exemplar proponents of the Christian life. Finally, Highest Heaven will focus on religious orders that provided organizational and philosophical underpinnings for the propagation of the faith.

As the recent U.S. presidential campaign has shown, the issue of international free trade and its effect on American jobs has been hotly contested. Public and political opinion of international trade deals like TPP and NAFTA has become more hostile, with many foreign countries being branded as ‘job killers’. China has borne the brunt of this criticism, and the trade imbalance between the world’s largest and second-largest economies – worsened by allegations of currency manipulation – is seized upon by many Americans as justification for a more aggressive, protectionist economic policy against Beijing. But is American economic competitiveness really on the decline? Does the future for international free trade deals look bleak? And what would be the fallout of a U.S. trade war with China? WorldBoston’s Great Decisions series is pleased to host Jeremy Haft, an entrepreneur with nearly two decades of firsthand experience in China, as he discusses these and other questions. An adjunct professor at Georgetown University, he is also the author of the recent book Unmade in China: The Hidden Truth about China’s Economic Miracle. Photo By Base64, retouched by CarolSpears - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4222127

In October 2016, Politico reporter Hadas Gold wrote an article about the presidential campaign and was met with a litany of Naziesque death threats. She received a photoshopped image of herself with a bloody bullet hole to her forehead and a yellow “Jude” star, as Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany, on her chest. From journalists and activists, to doctors and politicians, death threats, and particularly anti-Semitic and anti-women cyber threats, have become common fodder on social media. The mechanisms of the internet – its global reach, immediacy and anonymity – have exposed an ugly underbelly of targeted hate. As they consider user rights and First Amendment freedoms, social media platforms are grappling with whether to police, or even prosecute, these threats. On the internet, the push and pull between hate speech and freedom of speech reflects a new frontier in the pursuit of an ethical society. Is there a road back to civility? How far can the First Amendment be reasonably stretched? Should journalists and others under threat simply double down, or is self-censorship the way forward? (Photo: [Pixbay](https://pixabay.com/en/hacker-hacking-cyber-security-hack-1944688/ ""))