The Provost’s Lecture on Diversity will feature Catharine MacKinnon, the renown feminist legal scholar and pioneering activist for women’s rights, whose ideas have helped shape the national conversation about sexual harassment, rape, pornography, prostitution and gender equality. In dialogue with the audience and interviewer Lubna Mian (L’97), Penn’s Executive Director for Faculty and an Adjunct Professor of Law, MacKinnon will elaborate the provocative ideas eloquently expressed in her latest book, Butterfly Politics(Harvard 2017). Coined by Edward Lorenz, the “butterfly effect” is the causal phenomenon that small changes can have large effects--the flapping of the wings of a butterfly can contribute to the formation of a tornado weeks later. Butterfly Politics argues that our seemingly insignificant actions can have “butterfly effects,” animating political activism and advancing equality, resulting in major social and cultural transformations. Butterfly Politics is inspiring, principled, socially conscious engagement with the law.
