Events

2020 is a moment when we find an increased awareness of systemic racism and police brutality growing across demographic lines during the Presidency of Donald J. Trump, whose race baiting and divisiveness has sought to characterize political dissent as anarchy, delegitimizing one of the bedrock values of U.S. citizenship. But 2020 also marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, which told the story of a little girl whose deepest desire was to have blue eyes. Readers of Morrison’s novel were invited to reflect on the impact white supremacy could exert on Black lives. In this talk Herman Beavers attempts to parse what it means to read Morrison’s novel in the age of neoliberal democracy and autocratic leadership.

Is there something seriously wrong with public debate in America?  And, if so, can the problem be remedied? Join Penn President Amy Gutmann and Penn Professor Michael Delli Carpini as they and a panel of distinguished guests confront these and other questions at the 2020 David and Lyn Silfen University Forum.

West Philly political and community leaders discuss the role of the University of Pennsylvania in the neighborhood's life and development.  The Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy and the Philomathean Society present a POLITICS ON THE EDGE event featuring three West Philly leaders — Jamie Gauthier, Rick Krajewski, and Paul Prescod — on the impact of Penn and its policies on their neighborhood.

The inaugural Annenberg Conversation event will feature Annenberg Presidential Associate Professor Sarah J. Jackson in conversation with Benjamin Todd Jealous, President of People for the American Way. Together, they will explore race, social justice, and social media.

Wale Adebanwi is the Rhodes Professor of Race Relations at the African Studies Centre and Fellow of St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. He is also an associate member of the Oxford Department of Politics and International Relations and was the immediate past Director of the African Studies Centre (2017-2020). Before Oxford, he taught at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and the University of California-Davis, USA. He is a political scientist and anthropologist, with doctoral degrees in both disciplines from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and Cambridge University, UK. He is the author of Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria and co-editor of The Political Economy of Everyday Life in Africa.

The symposium positively highlights Penn's work in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and to fosters interdisciplinary dialogue among stakeholders across campus to inform Penn’s ongoing engagement in the region.

Join Penn’s Guthrie Ramsey, Jr., Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Music and Africana Studies, in conversation with Shana Redmond, Professor of Musicology and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, for our first Center for Africana Studies Faculty Research Colloquium

Speaker: Charlton McIlwain, New York University - The civil rights revolution and the computing revolution were set on a collision course in the early 1960s. The aftermath of that collision narrowed, nullified and constrained the relationship between Black people and computing technology. From the very beginning Black people were imagined and defined as "the problem" that computing technology must solve. Our once imagined future has borne itself out in devastating consequences evident in our present. As we stand on the precipice of another technological revolution today, can we as a society right our relationship to technology so that we can both imagine, define, pursue, and control a different array of Black futures?

The Arthur Ross Gallery presents a panel discussion on the removal of monuments throughout the US (and abroad) as symbols of racism and oppression. 

From the toppling of Jefferson Davis by Black Lives Matter protestors in Richmond, Adam Pike in DC, Frank Rizzo in Philadelphia and many others, we invite you to join our panelists.

Speakers: Arlene Dávila, New York University; and Elizabeth Ferrer, BRIC - This conversation between Arlene Davila and Elizabeth Ferrer explores the arguments in Davila's most recent book, Latinx Art: Artists, Markets, and Politics (Duke University Press, 2020). Davila, founding director of The Latinx Project at NYU, draws on numerous interviews with artists, dealers, and curators to explore the problem of visualizing Latinx art and artists. Providing an inside and critical look at the global contemporary art market, Davila's book is at once an introduction to contemporary Latinx art and a call to decolonize the art worlds and practices that erase and whitewash Latinx artists. This conversation draws on Ferrer's research and Davila and Ferrer's decades-long engagements with Latinx art and artists in New York City and beyond.