Each year, the CCSS annual lecture brings eminent thinkers to Cornell to address the campus and Ithaca community on pressing social issues.
CCSS Distinguished Lecture in the Social Sciences
This popular event, which is open to the Ithaca community and the campus audience, generally draws an overflow audience and is followed by a reception.
We are in the process of scheduling our 2023 lecture. Stay tuned in the coming months for more information.
Improving Equality of Opportunity in America: New Insights from Big Data
Raj Chetty, Economics, Harvard University
Co-sponsored by the Cornell Department of Economics
Children’s chances of earning more than their parents have fallen from 90% to 50% over the past half-century in America. How can we restore the American Dream of upward mobility for our children? In this talk, Raj Chetty discusses recent work that he and his colleagues at Opportunity Insights have done to study this question. Among other topics, the talk shows how children’s chances of climbing the income ladder vary across neighborhoods, analyzes the sources of racial disparities in intergenerational mobility, and discusses the role of higher education in creating greater income mobility. The talk concludes by discussing how local policymakers can harness big data to increase opportunity in their own communities and institutions.
For more on Raj Chetty, visit his website here.
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Monday, April 18, 2022
Our Racial Moment of Truth
Isabel Wilkerson
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
Co-sponsors: Cornell Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge and Office of Faculty Development and Diversity
With the high-profile killings of unarmed African-Americans at the hands of police and civilians, protests are mounting and debates intensifying. These events have left many people asking just how far we have really come since the days of Jim Crow—and the need for dialogue has never been more acute. In this timely lecture, Isabel Wilkerson addresses the persistence of racial injustice as a national challenge and what history can teach us as we work to resolve it.
For more on Isabel Wilkerson, view her website here.
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Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Democracy, Today: Fake News, Social Networks and Algorithms
David Lazer, Northeastern University
Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Computer and Information Science
Check out the video recording here.
Co-sponsors: Communication, Computer Science, Information Science
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Thursday, October 24, 2019
Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People
Mahzarin Banaji, Harvard University
Richard Clark Cabot Professor of Social Ethics and Chair in the Department of Psychology
Co-sponsors: Office of Faculty Development and Diversity, Department of Psychology, Center of Bright Beams
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Monday, February 11, 2019
Racism and the New Racial Science
Dorothy Roberts, University of Pennsylvania
George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights
Co-sponsors: Cornell Law School, African Studies and Research Center
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Wednesday, November 15, 2017
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Matthew Desmond, Princeton University
Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology
Co-sponsor: Center for the Study of Inequality
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Wednesday, November 16, 2016
The CCSS is committed to providing universal access to all of our events and facilities. For disability accommodations (e.g, sign language interpreters, alternative formats) please contact Katie Anderson at socialsciences@cornell.edu or 607-255-3408 as soon as possible.