Events

Democracy in African American Political Thought
Melvin Rogers in conversation with Neil Roberts
Series: Philosophy Today
October 17, 2023 | Recording

The Political Theory of Algorithms
Josh Simons in conversation with Lily Hu 
Series: Philosophy Today
March 28, 2023 | Recording

Justice for Animals:
Martha Nussbaum with Jeremy Bendik-Keymer
Series: Philosophy Today
December 12, 2022 | Recording

Future-Proof Science:
Peter Vickers with Jana Bacevic
Series: Philosophy Today
November 21, 2022 | Recording

Black Existential Freedom:
Nathalie Etoke with Lewis Gordon
Series: Philosophy Today
November 14, 2022 | Recording

Why Does the State Care About Your Gender?:
Paisley Currah with Robin Dembroff
Series: Philosophy Today
October 10, 2022 | Recording

How Philosophy Helps Us Find Our Way:
Kieran Setiya with Anil Gomes
Series: Philosophy Today
October 3, 2022 | Recording

The Politics of Pleasure:
Kate Soper with Lynne Segal
Series: Philosophy Today
September 20, 2022 | Recording

The Racial Capitalism of Care: A Conversation on Inequities in Medicine and Child Welfare
Ruha Benjamin with Dorothy Robert and Drs. Michelle Morse and Bram Wispelwey
April 27, 2022 | Recording

Celebrating Boston Review’s Annual Arts Anthology, Repair
March 31, 2022 | Recording

Prospects for Peace and Justice in Israel and Palestine
Sally Abed, Noam Chomsky, Alon-lee Green, Congressman Jim McGovern, and Dr. James Zogby
Co-hosted with Standing Together
December 9, 2021 | Recording

Race & Justice: The Philosophy of Charles W. Mills
A roundtable with Joshua Cohen, Derrick Darby, Robert Gooding-Williams, Desmond Jagmohan, Falguni Sheth, and Tommie Shelby
November 11, 2021 | Recording

Read Until You Understand: The Wisdom of Black Life and Literature
Sonia Sanchez, Farah Jasmine Griffin, and Elleza Kelley
October 25, 2021 | Recording

AI for Justice
Daron Acemoglu, Beth Noveck, Rob Reich, and Annette Zimmermann
September 28, 2021

Celebrating Binyavanga Wainaina’s Fiction
Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, Aruni Kashyap, Neo Sinoxolo Musangi, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Sigrid Rausing, with Aimar Arriola, Adam McGee, Ed Pavlić, Achal Prabhala, and Giulia Tognon
April 14, 2021 | Recording

Where Do We Go From Here: A Fundraiser for Black Lives

September 4, 2018 | Recording

Saturday, November 4, 2017 | 9:00 a.m. | Recording
Harvard Science Center, Hall C

Nuclear weapons strategy in the United States is designed around “presidential first use,” an arrangement that enables one man, the president, to kill and maim many millions of people in a single afternoon. What legal or philosophical principle differentiates the moral harm or moral wrong that would be attributed to a terrorist, non-state actor or hacker who delivered a nuclear weapon from a presidential launch of a nuclear weapon? The conference will bring together international and constitutional scholars and statesmen to examine the nature of presidential first use in the United States, as well as parallel arrangements in the other eight nuclear states.

Friday, March 31, 2017
Kresge Auditorium, MIT | Recording

At an event presented by Harvard Book Store, Boston Review, and the MIT Department of Political Science, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders will discuss his experiences as a presidential candidate and his thoughts about the political process. His talk will be based in part on the ideas presented in his latest book, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In. As a part of the evening’s presentation, Senator Sanders will be joined on-stage for a Q&A moderated by Archon Fung, Academic Dean and Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Monday, January 30, 2017 | 6:30 p.m. | Recording
Cambridge Public Library

Harvard Book Store and Boston Review present readings by Lucie Brock-Broido, Peter Gizzi, Jorie Graham, Ricardo Maldonado, Nathan Xavier Osorio, Monica Youn, and more from Poems for Political Disaster, a new Boston Review chapbook featuring both new poems and selections from our archive that record, refract, subvert, or otherwise respond to political trauma, catastrophe, or terror—both here at home and abroad. The evening will be hosted by Boston Review poetry editor B.K. Fischer.

Sunday, January 15, 2017 | 1:30-4:30 p.m.
Rabb Hall, Boston Public Library

Greater Boston Writers Resist will feature readings and performances by authors, artists, young writers, and special guests. In resistance to the divisive and increasingly hostile political climate, this event will re-affirm the unifying democratic pillars now under threat, such as freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of worship, equality, and diversity.

Participants in the program include Rob Arnold, Jabari Asim, Liana Asim, James Carroll, Martha Collins, Chris Cooper, Laura van den Berg, Danielle Legros Georges, Jennifer Haigh, Rachel Kadish, Helen Elaine Lee, Giles Li, Jennifer De Leon, Marianne Leone, Pablo Medina, Alma Richeh, Paul Yoon, young writers from the Greater Boston area, and special guests.

Greater Boston Writers Resist is independently organized and co-sponsored by Boston Review, The Critical Flame, PEN New England, Beacon Press, Aforementioned Productions, AGNI, Arrowsmith Press, Black Ocean, Blacksmith House Poetry Series, the Center for Arabic Culture, the City of Boston’s Office of New Bostonians and the Office of the Poet Laureate, CONSEQUENCE Magazine, the Dominican Development Center, the Greater Boston Latino Network, Grub Street, Harvard Bookstore, Harvard Review, Louder than a Bomb, Mass LEAP, Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, Memorious, Ploughshares, The Poets’ Theater, PoemWorks, Post Road, Salamander, and the UMASS-Boston Creative Writing MFA.

Election Forum: Whose Vote Matters
Tuesday, November 1, 2016 | 5:30-7:00 p.m.
Kirsch Auditorium MIT 32-123

Join Boston Review as well as the MIT Department of Political Science, MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Science, and the Class of 1971 Kent State Memorial Fund for an exciting and timely forum on race, election access, and voter rights. Light refreshments will be served.

Panelists: Charles Stewart III (MIT), Ariel White (MIT), Rahsaan Maxwell (UNC Chapel Hill)

No Justice, No Peace: Race and Power in America
Monday, October 17, 2016 | 7:00-9:00 p.m. | Recording
First Parish Church, 1446 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA

Please join us for a very special “Ethics in Your World” Book Series event at the Cambridge Forum featuring Tommie Shelby, Elizabeth Hinton, and Khalil Gibran Muhammad in conversation with Danielle Allen.

Featuring a facilitated discussion with three authors who have recent publications on the complex issues of race and structural injustice, and the steps that citizens and governments can take to find practical solutions to problems such as mass incarceration, extreme poverty in disadvantaged communities, and problematic notions of black criminality.

This Cambridge Forum event is a collaboration with Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard Book Store, Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University Press, and Boston Review.

Danielle Allen at Harvard Book Store
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Kirsch Auditorium MIT 32-123

Join Boston Review and Harvard Book Store for an evening with Danielle Allen, Harvard professor, Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, and author of Boston Review‘s May/June 2016 forum, “What is Education For?” for a discussion of her new book, Education and Equality.

“Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Contest Winners’ Reading
Monday, May 9, 2016 | 8:15 p.m.
1395 Lexington Ave., New York, NY 10128

Join 92Y and Boston Review for a reading by the winners of the “Discovery” 2016 Poetry Contest (contest details here).

Poetry Reading and Signing at Cambridge Public Library
Wednesday, December 9 | 7:00 p.m.

Join Boston Review along with Harvard Book Store at Cambridge Public Library for a poetry reading and signing featuring some of contemporary poetry’s most prominent figures.

Poets in attendance: Lucie Brock-Broido, Mary Jo Bang, Stephanie Burt, and Major Jackson

Anne-Marie Slaughter at the Brattle Theatre
Tuesday November 3 | 6:00 p.m.

Harvard Book Store, Boston Review, and WAM!: Women, Action, and the Media join to welcome president and CEO of the New America Foundation, Anne-Marie Slaughter, for a discussion of her book, Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family, a thought-provoking examination of the struggle for equality in the workplace and the home in the 21st century.

Boston Review at the 2015 Boston Book Festival in Copley Square
Saturday, October 24 | 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Join Boston Review at Massachusetts’ best celebration of authors, presses, and lovers of reading. October 24 is Boston Book Festival’s central event, a free street festival in Copley Square, and Boston Review will be there all day with merchandise and special BBF-exclusive deals on subscriptions.

Roberta Kaplan at the Brattle Theatre
Thursday October 8, 2015 | 6:00 p.m.

Harvard Book Store and Boston Review welcome Roberta Kaplan, joined by Eric Lander, to discuss her book, Then Comes Marriage: United States v. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA.

Daniel Geary and Benjamin Hedin: The Moynihan Report and Civil Rights
Friday September 18, 2015 | 3:00 p.m.

In conversation with Eugene Rivers, Daniel Geary and Benjamin Hedin discuss their books, Beyond Civil Rights: The Moynihan Report and Its Legacy and In Search of the Movement: The Struggle for Civil Rights Then and Now.

This event was part of Harvard Book Store’s Friday Forum, which takes place on Friday afternoons during the academic year as a way to highlight scholarly books in a wide range of fields, with a particular focus on local scholars.

“‘The Lip of the Flamingo’: Poetry and the Misuse of Language”
Thursday, February 26, | 6 p.m.
Edison Newman Room, Houghton Library
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

A poetry lecture by Timothy Donnelly as part of the Bagley Wright Lecture Series.

Saving Privacy
Tuesday, November 11 | 4:30 p.m.
McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, Stanford University.

A forum featuring Reed Hundt, Michael Dearing, and Jennifer Granick co-sponsored by the Stanford McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society.

Because of Edward Snowden’s remarkable public service, we know that the National Security Agency, with the cooperation of some large firms, has amassed an unprecedented database of personal information. The ostensible goal in collecting that information is to protect national security. The effect, according to Reed Hundt, is to undermine democracy.

Hundt—chair of the Federal Communications Commission under President Clinton and early champion of the Internet—argues that the law and traditional checks on political power have not kept pace with the digital realm. How should we respond? Hundt proposes a new compact that encourages citizens to use encryption to protect their information and offers government support for technologies and legislation that enable self-protection. Moreover, the government would have to rely on tried-and-true practices of the criminal justice system, not secret backdoors, to police encrypted digital space.

Lessons From Market Basket
Thursday September 25, 2014 | 6:00 p.m.
An MIT / Boston Review Forum

Couldn’t make it? Read our recap here.

There is much to learn from the historic revolt of Market Basket employees and customers that saved its successful business model—featuring low prices and high quality jobs—and brought Arthur T. Demoulas back in control of the company. This MIT / Boston Review Forum brought together experts in leadership, corporate governance, finance, marketing, operations, and labor to discuss the key lessons learned and how to put them to work in teaching and practice and hear directly from people at Market Basket who made it all happen.

We invited students, faculty, staff at MIT and sister universities and members of the public to join us and offer their ideas on what this case means for the future of American business and the education of future leaders.

Privacy Policy
Monday September 22, 2014 | 7:00 p.m.
Harvard Book Store

Stephanie Burt, Dan Chelotti, Jorie Graham, Robert Pinsky, and Thera Webb read from their contributions to Privacy Policy: The Anthology of Surveillance Poetics.

Matt Taibbi and Robin Young discuss The Divide
Thursday May 1, 2014 | 7:00 p.m.
First Parish Church, Cambridge, MA

Harvard Book Store and Boston Review welcome contributing editor for Rolling Stone Matt Taibbi and award-winning host of NPR’s “Here and Now” Robin Young for a discussion of Taibbi’s newest book, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.

Senator Elizabeth Warren: A Fighting Chance
Thursday April 24, 2014 | 7:00 p.m.
First Parish Church, Cambridge, MA

Harvard Book Store and Boston Review welcome Senator Elizabeth Warren for a discussion of her forthcoming memoir, A Fighting Chance..

AWP Conference Off-Site Reading: Amy King and Tyler Mills
Saturday March 1, 2014 | 6:30–8:30 pm
The Freehold Theater
with Anomalous Press, Gold Line Press, Ricochet Editions, and Rose Metal Press

Featuring Amy King and Tyler Mills for Boston Review; Steve Bradbury for Anomalous Press; Iver Arnegard and Cynthia Marie Hoffman for Gold Line Press; Elizabeth J. Colen, Miriam Bird Greenberg, and Harmony Holliday for Ricochet; Kim Henderson and Gregory Robinson for Rose Metal Press.

The Landscape Listens: the Voices of Women in American Poetry
Thursday March 20–Friday March 21, 2014

With Sonia Sanchez, Robert Pinsky, Lucie Brock-Broido, Jericho Brown, Marie Howe, Vijay Seshadri, Jane Shore, Henri Cole, CD Wright, Afaa Weaver, and others.

The Poetry Society of America 2014 national series The Voices of Women in American Poetry celebrates the immense achievement of a wide range of poets, from Phillis Wheatley and Anne Bradstreet to Adrienne Rich and Lucille Clifton. Distinguished contemporary poets—both male and female—will gather in five cities around the country to discuss an important female predecessor and her influence on their life and work. The series will launch with a one-and-a-half day festival in Boston, co-sponsored by Boston University as well as Boston Review, featuring readings and panel discussions by poets Sonia Sanchez, Robert Pinsky, Lucie Brock-Broido, Jericho Brown, Marie Howe, Vijay Seshadri, Jane Shore, Henri Cole, CD Wright, Afaa Weaver, and others.

The Uses of Black Political Thought
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Harvard Book Store

A panel featuring Nick Bromell, Rev. Eugene Rivers, and Brandon M. Terry.

The Syria Dilemma
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
2021 14th St NW, Washington, DC

Sponsored by Teaching for Change and Busboys & Poets.

A panel including Danny Postel and Nader Hashemi.

Noam Chomsky: What is Anarchism?
Monday November 18, 2013 | 5:30 p.m.
MIT E51-115, Wong Auditorium

Noam Chomsky, world-renowned public intellectual and MIT Professor emeritus, will discuss the reasoning behind his fearless lifelong questioning of the legitimacy of entrenched power. Chomsky’s anarchism is distinctly optimistic and egalitarian. It is a living, evolving tradition, situated in a historical lineage, which emphasizes the power of collective, rather than individualist, action.

This event is based on the topic of Noam Chomsky’s new volume, On Anarchism, available from New Press. Nathan Schneider—editor of Waging Nonviolence and author of Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse—will introduce Chomsky and moderate the Q&A.

The Case for Climate Engineering
David Keith, with Kenneth Oye and Stephen Van Evera
Wednesday, October 30, 2013 | 4:30 pm
MIT 32-155 (Stata Center), 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA

Climate engineering—which could slow the pace of global warming by injecting reflective particles into the upper atmosphere—has emerged in recent years as an extremely controversial technology. And for good reason: it carries unknown risks and it may undermine commitments to energy conservation. Some critics also view it as an immoral human breach of the natural world. The latter objection, David Keith argues, is groundless; we have been using technology to alter our environment for years. But he agrees that there are large issues at stake. On October 30, Keith, Oye, and Van Evra will discuss the possibility of and obstacles to climate engineering. This event is based on the topic of David Keith’s new BR Book, A Case for Climate Engineering, available soon from MIT Press.

This is an Ideas Matter event, a joint project of Boston Review and MIT’s Political Science Department that brings BR writers together with other experts and practitioners for substantive debate on the challenges of our times.

Occupy the Future
Chris Hedges, Debra Satz, J. Phillip Thompson, Nadeem Mazen
Thursday, December 6, 2012 | 4:30 p.m.
MIT 26-100, Cambridge, MA

Boston Review has closely followed the Occupy movement and we welcome both the attention it has drawn to societal problems as well as its potential to re-democratize American politics.

On Thursday, December 6th, Debra Satz, director of the Stanford Center for Ethics in Society, leads a panel discussion with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, MIT Professor of Urban Studies and Planning J. Phillip Thompson, and Occupy Boston participant Nadeem Mazen, on the state and future of the Occupy movement. The panel will be moderated by MIT Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy Sally Haslanger.

Climate Change: Science and Politics
Dr. Kerry Emanuel, author of What We Know About Climate Change
Wednesday, November 7, 2012 | 6:00 p.m.
MIT Wong Auditorium (in the Tang Center)
70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA

Dr. Kerry Emanuel, one of America’s leading experts on climate change and severe weather, will discuss recent severe weather events, the politics of climate change, as well as his Boston Review Book, What We Know About Climate Change.

Islam in America
John Bowen and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, with Christopher Lydon
Tuesday, May 15, 2012 | 4–5:30 p.m.
Bartos Theater, MIT E15 Atrium level
20 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, author of Moving the Mountain, and Professor John Bowen, author of the new Boston Review Book Blaming Islam, join Boston Review and the MIT Political Science Department for a discussion of the state of Islam in the United States, moderated by Christopher Lydon.