Fall 2018 SSF Events


Race, Racism and the New Racial Science

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Dorothy Roberts, 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology, and Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, University of Pennsylvania

The lecture will critically examine the new racial science of sequencing the human genome and linking social outcomes to genetic traits that has generated collaborations between biological and social scientists. It will propose a more just way for social and biological scientists to study race and racism.

Sponsored by the Department of Africana Studies; Office of the Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences; Dresher Center for the Humanities; Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Health Administration and Policy; Office of Undergraduate Admissions and Orientation


ROI or RIP? Higher Education and the Future of America

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Cecilia Elena Rouse, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs; Lawrence and Shirley Katzman and Lewis and Anna Ernst Professor in Economics and Education; Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University

Many believe higher education is in crisis with increasing tuition and student debt, and few benefits to show for it.  In this lecture, Cecilia Rouse will discuss public perception of higher education and its benefits and costs to individuals and society.

Mullen Lecture, sponsored by the Department of Economics


Moving from Health Disparities to Health Equity: Intersectional Lenses on Social Media and Artificial Intelligence

Fay Cobb Payton, Professor of Information Systems and Technology at North Carolina State University; Program Director at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the Division of Computer and Network Systems

This lecture will discuss research on health, social media and current trends in AI, and how these trends are absent of intersectional design, interpretation, and meaning, for those most impacted by health disparities.

Sponsored by the Center for Social Science Scholarship


Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech

Keith Whittington, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics, Princeton University

Free speech is under attack at many colleges and universities today. In his new book, Speak Freely, Keith Whittington argues that without free speech, a university cannot fulfill its most basic, fundamental, and essential purposes, including fostering freedom of thought, ideological diversity, and tolerance.

Sponsored by the Department of Political Science