Menu
Don’t Miss a Thing
Get our latest essays, archival selections, reading lists, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.
Menu
Get our latest essays, archival selections, reading lists, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.
To receive notifications in your inbox about all upcoming events, sign up for our newsletter and check the box that says “Virtual Events.”
We are thrilled to announce that our Philosophy Today series is returning for Spring 2023! Co-hosted with The Philosopher, these free, virtual events bring together major figures at the forefront of contemporary philosophy.
Tickets to this series are free and open to the public. Please consider making a small contribution of $5—or any amount you can donate—when you register to help fund future events like this and the work of Boston Review.
Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America
Robin D. G. Kelley with Whiteout authors Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland, and David Herzberg
Wednesday, April 12, 2023
2:00 PM ET
Virtual Event
Co-hosted with Haymarket Books and others.
In the past two decades, media images of the surprisingly white “new face” of the US opioid crisis abounded. But why was the crisis so white? Some argued that skyrocketing overdoses were “deaths of despair” signaling deeper socioeconomic anguish in white communities. Whiteout makes the counterintuitive case that the opioid crisis was the product of white racial privilege as well as despair.
Anchored by interviews, data, and riveting firsthand narratives from three leading experts—an addiction psychiatrist, a policy advocate, and a drug historian—Whiteout reveals how a century of structural racism in drug policy, and in profit-oriented medical industries led to mass white overdose deaths. The authors implicate racially segregated health care systems, the racial assumptions of addiction scientists, and relaxed regulation of pharmaceutical marketing to white consumers. Whiteout is an unflinching account of how racial capitalism is toxic for all Americans.
Justice for Animals
Martha Nussbaum with Jeremy Bendik-Keymer
Monday, December 12, 2022
2:00 PM ET
Virtual Event
Part of our fall 2022 event series, Philosophy Today, co-hosted with The Philosopher.
How can we create a world in which human beings are truly friends of animals, not exploiters or users? Animals are in trouble all over the world. Whether through the cruelties of the factory meat industry, poaching and game hunting, habitat destruction, or neglect of the companion animals that people purport to love, animals suffer injustice and horrors at our hands every day. The world needs an ethical awakening, a consciousness-raising movement of international proportions, and in this event, Martha C. Nussbaum, one of the world’s most influential philosophers and humanists, will defend a revolutionary approach to animal rights, ethics, and law. Both an urgent call to action and a manual for change, Nussbaum will look to philosophy, politics, and law to guide us towards meeting our ethical responsibilities to the other animals.
Future-Proof Science
Peter Vickers with Jana Bacevic
Monday, November 21, 2022
2:00 PM ET
Virtual Event
Part of our fall 2022 event series, Philosophy Today, co-hosted with The Philosopher.
Is science getting at the truth? Those who spread doubt about science tend to argue that scientists were “sure” in the past, and then they ended up being wrong. In this conversation with Jana Bacevic, philosopher of science Peter Vickers will look to historical investigation and philosophical-sociological analysis to defend science against this potentially dangerous scepticism. Indeed, Vickers will argue, we can confidently identify many scientific claims that are future-proof: they will last forever, so long as science continues. For Vickers, a scientific claim is “future-proof” when the relevant scientific community is large, international, and diverse, and at least 95% of that community would describe the claim as a “scientific fact”. In the entire history of science, no claim meeting these criteria has ever been overturned, despite enormous opportunity.
Black Existential Freedom
Nathalie Etoke with Lewis Gordon
Monday, November 14, 2022
2:00 PM ET
Virtual Event
Part of our fall 2022 event series, Philosophy Today, co-hosted with The Philosopher.
The history of slavery, colonization, subjugation, gratuitous violence, and the denial of basic human rights to people of African descent has led Afro-Pessimists to look at black existence through the lens of white supremacy and anti-blackness. In this conversation with Lewis R. Gordon, Nathalie Etoke will reject this movement of thought, arguing that Blackness is not inherently synonymous with victimhood. Rather, it is inextricable from existential freedom and the struggle for political liberation. By way of Africana existential philosophy, African-American Studies, Afro-French Studies, Diaspora Studies, and African studies, Etoke will explore the continuities and discontinuities of black existence and the manifestations and the meanings of blackness within different countries, time periods, and social and political contexts.
Why Does the State Care About Your Gender?
Paisley Currah with Robin Dembroff
Monday, October 10, 2022
2:00 PM ET
Virtual Event
Part of our fall 2022 event series, Philosophy Today, co-hosted with The Philosopher.
In this conversation with Robin Dembroff, Paisley Currah will offer a fascinating account of the work that sex classifications do in structuring politics and policy. Moving away from a simple identification of transphobia as a cause of discriminatory policies, Currah will ask a more nuanced and ultimately more informative set of questions about what we can learn from looking at how, when, and why state institutions collaborate in or thwart sex reclassification. In this way, Currah will help us understand much more about what sex does for state projects, and ultimately why gender pluralism can help to liberate our political imaginations – and our lives.
How Philosophy Helps Us Find Our Way
Kieran Setiya with Anil Gomes
Monday, October 3, 2022
2:00 PM ET
Virtual Event
Part of our fall 2022 event series, Philosophy Today, co-hosted with The Philosopher.
There is no cure for the human condition: life is hard. But Kieran Setiya believes philosophy can help. In this conversation with Anil Gomes, Setiya will offer us a map for navigating rough terrain, from personal trauma to the injustice and absurdity of the world, showing how the tools of philosophy can help us find our way. Drawing on ancient and modern philosophy as well as fiction, history, memoir, film, comedy, social science, and stories from his own experience, Setiya will ask how we can weather life’s adversities, finding hope and living well when life is hard.
The Politics of Pleasure
Kate Soper with Lynne Segal
Tuesday, September 20, 2022
2:00 PM ET
Virtual Event
Part of our fall 2022 event series, Philosophy Today, co-hosted with The Philosopher.
As an environmental and denuclearization activist, Kate Soper noticed a worrisome pattern: efforts to green the economy often sound like calls for making do with less and giving up modern pleasures. To Soper, this gets it exactly wrong. Discussing her forum essay in Boston Review’s summer 2022 issue, she argues in this event for an “alternative hedonism” that sees “post-growth living” as an opportunity for greater pleasure, not less. Modern life is immiserating, sickening, isolating, and exhausting, Soper contends, creating desires that consumption can never fulfill. Designing simpler ways of living—built around local community and abundant free time—could make us happier and healthier while giving our overextended planet a new lease on life.
The Racial Capitalism of Care: A Conversation on Inequities in Medicine and Child Welfare
Wednesday, April 27, 2022
6:30 PM EDT
Virtual Event
U.S. society is marked by deep inequities in the distribution of care, from unpaid care work inside the home to the disparate treatment and impact of various government agencies and programs. This event, moderated by Ruha Benjamin, examines how racial capitalism—the intertwined operation of race and class—shapes two major systems of care in the United States. Drs. Michelle Morse and Bram Wispelwey discuss their advocacy work on racial inequalities in medicine, while Dorothy E. Roberts discusses her new book on the child welfare system, Torn Apart. Together, they ask how we got here and how we can build a more just world.
Celebrating Boston Review’s Annual Arts Anthology
Thursday, March 31, 2022
8:00 PM EST
Virtual Event
Boston Review welcomes celebrated writers Meredith Talusan (Fairest, one of O magazine’s Best LGBTQ Books 2020) and Brian Teare (Doomestead Days, winner of the 2019 Four Quartets Prize) for a night of readings to celebrate the release of our new literary anthology, Repair. Moderated by arts editor Adam McGee and contributing arts editors Ed Pavlić and Ivelisse Rodriguez, the evening will also feature Boston Review 2021 contest winners Adebe DeRango-Adem, Simone Person, and Yiru Zhang.
We bear deep wounds, individually and collectively. All have been worsened by a period of destructive politics that left us ill-equipped to respond to a global health catastrophe. As we struggle to recover our footing and grieve our dead, we believe that the arts must have a voice in the conversation about how we heal.
In this new anthology of poetry, fiction, memoir, comics, and essays from renowned writers and newcomers, contributors explore whether and how we can repair from terrible ruptures.
Tickets to this event are free and open to the public. Please consider making a small contribution of $3—or any amount you can donate—when you register to help fund future events like this and the work of Boston Review.
Prospects for Peace and Justice in Israel and Palestine
Thursday, December 9, 2021
5:00 PM EST
Virtual Event
Boston Review and Standing Together—one of the largest grassroots people’s movements in Israel working to bring together Jews and Arabs—welcome Sally Abed, Noam Chomsky, Alon-lee Green, Congressman Jim McGovern, and Dr. James Zogby, President of the Arab-American Institute, for a panel discussion on the prospects for peace and justice in Israel and Palestine. This event will be moderated by Omar Dahi.
Tickets to this event are free and open to the public. Please consider making a small contribution of $3—or any amount you can donate—when you register to help fund future events like this and the work of Boston Review.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS:
Noam Chomsky is an educator and linguist. He joined the University of Arizona in fall 2017, after several decades at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Jim McGovern is a member of the U.S. House, representing Massachusetts’ second Congressional District.
Omar Dahl is an associate professor of economcis at Hampshire College and research associate at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Alon-lee Green is one of the founding members of Standing Together, an elected member of the national leadership, and is currently acting as the national co-director, alongside Rula Daood.
Sally Abed is a member of the elected national leadership and currently acting as the resource development and relations coordinator at Standing Together.
Race & Justice: The Philosophy of Charles W. Mills
Thursday, November 11, 2021
2:00 PM EST
Virtual Event
Join Boston Review for a virtual roundtable to honor the life and work of Charles W. Mills. Featuring Desmond Jagmohan, Falguni Sheth, Robert Gooding-Williams, Tommie Shelby, and Derrick Darby as they seek to honor his life, his work in philosophy and political theory, and most importantly, what he meant for so many.
Read Until You Understand: The Wisdom of Black Life and Literature
Monday, October 25, 2021
6:00 PM EDT
Virtual Event
A conversation about what literature written by Black Americans teaches us about the fundamental questions of humanity, politics, and art. Featuring Sonia Sanchez, Farah Jasmine Griffin, and Elleza Kelley.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS:
Sonia Sanchez —poet, activist, scholar—was the Laura Carnell Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Temple University. She is the recipient of both the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award. One of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movement, Sanchez is the author of sixteen books. Her latest book is Collected Poems.
Farah Jasmine Griffin is the William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparitive Literature and African-American Studies at Columbia University, and author of the book Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature.
Elleza Kelley is a PhD candidtate in the English Department at Columbia University. Her research examies how black sptial and geographic production is archived in art and literature.
AI for Justice
Tuesday, September 28, 2021
6:00 PM EDT
Virtual Event
Boston Review welcomes four leading scholars for a critical public conversation on the economic and social impact of artificial intelligence, and what can be done to redirect it for the public good.
Contributors from Boston Review‘s Spring 2021 book, Redesigning AI, Daron Acemoglu, and Annette Zimmermann, will join Rob Reich, co-author of System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot, to explore the ways to ensure a just future for AI in a conversation moderated by Beth Noveck, Director of the Governance Lab and author of the book Solving Public Problems.
Tickets to this event are free and open to the public. Please consider making a small contribution of $3—or any amount you can donate—when you register to help fund future events like this and the work of Boston Review.
Celebrating Binyavanga Wainaina’s Fiction
Wednesday, April 14, 2021
12:00 p.m. ESD
Virtual Event
This conversation takes place on the occasion of the republication of his first short story, “Binguni!” (1996), by Boston Review’s Arts in Society project and The Against Nature Journal, and aims to initiate a critical revival of Wainaina’s fiction.
Panelists:
Oris Aigbokhaevbolo won the 2015 All Africa Music Award for Journalism. He has contributed to a range of publications, including the London Review of Books, Catapult, the New York Review of Books, Chimurenga, the Africa Report, and the Guardian.
Aruni Kashyap is a writer and translator from Assam. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Georgia.
Neo Sinoxolo Musangi is an independent queer feminist whose work-life is in art, academia and creative writing. The bulk of their work dwells on uncertainty, imagining freedom/s, nodes in nightmares, memory and failure. They are currently working on a monograph tentatively titled, Public Sex: Failure and post|colonial mediocrity in the biographical archive.
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor is an award-winning writer from Nairobi, Kenya. She is the author of the novels Dust and The Dragonfly Sea.
Sigrid Rausing is Editor and Publisher of Granta magazine and Publisher of Granta Books. She is the author of History, Memory and Identity in Post-Soviet Estonia and the memoirs Everything Is Wonderful and Mayhem.
Hosted by Aimar Arriola, Adam McGee, Ed Pavlić, Achal Prabhala, and Giulia Tognon
Writing Our Ancestors
Thursday, March 11, 2021
7:00 p.m. EST
Virtual Event
Harvard Book Store’s virtual author series and Boston Review welcome celebrated writers Sonia Sanchez (Robert Frost Medal), Tyehimba Jess (Pulitzer Prize), and Domenica Ruta (New York Times bestselling author of With or Without You), as well as Boston Review 2020 contest winners Cheswayo Mphanza and Yeoh Jo-Ann for a night of readings to celebrate the release of our new literary anthology, Ancestors. Moderated by arts editor Adam McGee and contributing arts editors Ed Pavlić and Ivelisse Rodriguez.
Tickets to this event are free. Support this author series by making a suggested $3 donation to Harvard Book Store upon registration or by purchasing a copy of Ancestors ahead of the event.
Where Do We Go From Here: A Fundraiser for Black Lives
Sunday July 12, 2020
5:00 p.m.
Virtual event
Harvard Book Store’s virtual event series and Boston Review welcome celebrated scholars Elizabeth Hinton, Robin D. G. Kelley, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and Cornel West for a panel discussion of the Black Lives Matter movement and the ongoing work of dismantling white supremacy in America. This panel will be moderated by Brandon Terry, Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and Social Studies at Harvard University.
Join Harvard Book Store, Boston Review, and this panel of nationally-renowned academics, authors, and cultural critics for a discussion of not only where we are and how we got here, but where we must go to secure a racially just future.
All proceeds generated from the sale of books—and from audience donations upon registration—will be divided equally and distributed to three fundraising organizations selected by our panelists:
Critical Resistance: Learn more here.
National Bail Out: Learn more here.
The Owl Movement Inc: Learn more here.
Free event—$3 donation suggested to support the organizations listed above.
MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM — The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis
Tuesday September 4, 2018
6:30 p.m. (doors at 6:00)
Cambridge Public Library
449 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02138
Harvard Book Store and Boston Review welcome distinguished philosopher and professor MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM for a discussion of her new book The Monarchy of Fear, in which turns her attention to the current political crisis that has polarized America since the 2016 election.
Although today’s atmosphere is marked by partisanship, divisive rhetoric, and the inability of two halves of the country to communicate with one another, Nussbaum focuses on what so many pollsters and pundits have overlooked. She sees a simple truth at the heart of the problem: the political is always emotional. Globalization has produced feelings of powerlessness in millions of people in the West. That sense of powerlessness bubbles into resentment and blame; blame of immigrants, blame of Muslims, blame of other races, blame of cultural elites. While this politics of blame is exemplified by the election of Donald Trump and the vote for Brexit, Nussbaum argues it can be found on all sides of the political spectrum, left or right.
Free event—no ticket required.
Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons: Is It Legal? Is It Constitutional? Is It Just?
Saturday, November 4, 2017
9:00 a.m.
Harvard Science Center, Hall C
1 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA
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.
To view full event details and to complete the free conference registration, visit the official event page.
Bernie Sanders Discusses Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In
Friday, March 31, 2017
5:00 p.m.
Kresge Auditorium, MIT
48 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139
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.
For full details, visit the event page on Harvard Book Store’s website.
Poems for Political Disaster: An Evening of Readings from a Boston Review Chapbook
Monday, January 30, 2017
6:30 p.m.
Cambridge Public Library
449 Broadway Cambridge, MA 02138
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.
Poems for Political Disaster is a new chapbook from Boston Review which includes an introduction by U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera as well as poems from Mary Jo Bang, Calvin Bedient, Shane McCrae, Khadijah Queen, Ange Mlinko, Wendy Xu, Craig Santos Perez, and Joshua Clover, as well as many others.
The event is free; no tickets are required.
Greater Boston WRITERS RESIST
Sunday, January 15, 2017
1:30-4:30 p.m.
Rabb Hall, Boston Public Library
Entrance at 700 Boylston Street
Sunday, January 15th is the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr, and on that day—five days before Donald Trump takes his oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution—hundreds of Greater Boston residents will come together to re-inaugurate their shared commitment to the rights and values that are essential to American democracy.
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. This event is free to all.
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.
Writers Resist demonstrations will take place on January 15 in more than fifty cities across three continents, an international counter-inaugural demonstration.
Election Forum: Whose Vote Matters?
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
5:30-7:00 p.m.
Kirsch Auditorium MIT 32-123
32 Vassar St, Cambridge, MA
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.
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.
Tommie Shelby, Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform
Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making
of Mass Incarceration in America
Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the
Making of Modern Urban America
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.
This event is free and open to the public; no ticket required. Books will be available for sale at the event.
Danielle Allen at Harvard Book Store
“Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Contest Winners’ Reading
Monday, May 9 at 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). For more details on the event and to purchase tickets, visit 92Y’s event page.
Poetry Reading and Signing at Cambridge Public Library
Wednesday, December 9 at 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. The event will begin at 7:00 p.m. and will likely be popular, so we recommend showing up early for optimal seating. Boston Review will be there to meet attendees and to offer a complimentary copy of our latest issue when attendees sign up for our e-newsletter. The event is free and open to the public.
Poets in Attendance:
Anne-Marie Slaughter at the Brattle Theatre
Tuesday November 3 at 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.
In her new book, she outlines her vision for what true equality between men and women means and how we can reach that goal. For more details and to purchase tickets, visit the Harvard Book Store event page.
Saturday, October 24 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Boston Review at the 2015 Boston Book Festival in Copley Square
Thursday October 8, 2015 at 6:00 p.m.
Roberta Kaplan at the Brattle Theatre
Friday September 18, 2015 at 3:00 p.m.
Daniel Geary and Benjamin Hedin: The Moynihan Report and Civil Rights
Thursday February 26 @ 6 p.m.
“‘The Lip of the Flamingo’: Poetry and the Misuse of Language”
A poetry lecture by Timothy Donnelly.
Edison Newman Room, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
About the Bagley Wright Lecture Series:
Tuesday, November 11 @ 4:30 p.m.
SAVING PRIVACY
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.
Stanford University
McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society
for more details visit their website.
Thursday September 25, 2014 @ 6:00 p.m.
LESSONS FROM MARKET BASKET
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.
Featured in this event were:
Wong Auditorium
MIT Tang Center
2 Amherst Street
Cambridge, MA
6:00–9:00 p.m.
Monday September 22, 2014 @ 7:00 p.m.
PRIVACY POLICY
Stephen Burt, Dan Chelotti, Jorie Graham, Robert Pinsky, and Thera Webb read from their contributions to Privacy Policy: The Anthology of Surveillance Poetics
Drones, phone taps, NSA leaks, internet tracking—the headlines confirm it—we are living in a state of constant surveillance, and the idea of “the private sphere” is no longer what it used to be. Privacy Policy: The Anthology of Surveillance Poetics responds to this timely and crucial issue through the voices of over sixty contemporary poets, including Robert Pinsky, Jorie Graham, John Ashbery, Rae Armantrout, Nikki Giovanni, and D.A. Powell. Nature, ethics, technology, sex, the internet—no voyeuristic stone goes unturned in this expansive exploration of the individual, information, and how we are watched.
Free and open to the public, this event is co-sponsored by Harvard Book Store, Black Ocean, and Boston Review.
Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02138
7:00 p.m.
Thursday May 1, 2014
Matt Taibbi and Robin Young discuss The Divide
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.
Over the last two decades, America has been falling deeper and deeper into a statistical mystery: Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles. Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail.
In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends—growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration—come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime—but it’s impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side.
Taibbi takes us to the front lines of the immigrant dragnet; into the newly punitive welfare system which treats its beneficiaries as thieves; and deep inside the stop-and-frisk world, where standing in front of your own home has become an arrestable offense. As he narrates these incredible stories, he draws out and analyzes their common source: a perverse new standard of justice, based on a radical, disturbing new vision of civil rights.
First Parish Church
1446 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
7:00pm
Purchase your $5 ticket from Harvard Book Store.
Includes a coupon for $5 off the book!
Thursday April 24, 2014
Senator Elizabeth Warren:
A Fighting Chance
Harvard Book Store and Boston Review welcome Senator Elizabeth Warren for a discussion of her forthcoming memoir, A Fighting Chance.
A Fighting Chance is Senator Warren’s personal story of her rise from a working class family in Oklahoma to the United States Senate, where she is the senior senator from Massachusetts. The book is a rousing call for protecting the middle class—the backbone of America—and for building a stronger country. It includes her work in the Senate and her improbable campaign to get there; her fight to establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; her effort to expose the truth behind the $700 billion bank bailout; and her battles with lobbyists over bankruptcy regulations. Through stories of hope and triumph, the book shows how Americans can wake up a government that has too often been consumed by special interests.
First Parish Church
1446 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
7:00pm
Saturday March 1, 2014
AWP Conference Off-Site Reading:
Amy King and Tyler Mills
with Anomalous Press, Gold Line Press, Ricochet Editions, and Rose Metal Press
6:30–8:30 pm
The Freehold Theater
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. Free and open to the public.
Thursday March 20–Friday March 21, 2014
The Landscape Listens:
the Voices of Women in American Poetry
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.
Wednesday, January 15
The Syria Dilemma
A panel including Danny Postel and Nader Hashemi
Sponsored by Teaching for Change and Busboys & Poets
2021 14th St NW, Washington, DC 20009
Thursday, February 27
The Uses of Black Political Thought
A panel featuring Nick Bromell, Rev Eugene Rivers, and Brandon M Terry
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138
Monday November 18, 2013
Noam Chomsky: What is Anarchism?
introduced by Nathan Schneider
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.
MIT E51-115, Wong Auditorium
entrance via Amherst Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
Free and open to the public
5:30 p.m.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013 @ 4:30 pm
The Case for Climate Engineering
David Keith, with Kenneth Oye and Stephen Van Evera
MIT 32-155 (Stata Center)
32 Vassar Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
Free and open to the public
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.
David Keith is a Harvard Professor of Physics, Applied Sciences, and Public Policy, and Kenneth Oye and Steven Van Evra are MIT Professors of Political Science.
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
MIT 26-100
Access via 60 Vassar Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
Thursday, December 6, 2012 4:30 p.m.
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
MIT Wong Auditorium (in the Tang Center)
70 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142
Wednesday, November 7, 2012 6:00 p.m.
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.
“Emanuel’s words are measured and authoritative. His book should help reduce the huge gap between what is understood by the scientific community and what is known by the people who need to know, the public and policymakers.”
—James Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Islam in America
John Bowen and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, with Christopher Lydon
Bartos Theater, MIT E15 Atrium level
20 Ames Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 4–5:30 p.m.
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.
A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975. Registered 501(c)(3) organization. Learn more about our mission
Supporter Membership
$100 / year
If you love Boston Review, support us with this biggest yearly membership.
Membership at this level includes:
Digital Membership
$25 / year
Get even more out of Boston Reviewwith our digital membership.
Membership at this level includes:
Print Membership
$50 / year
Turn the pages of Boston Review with our best value membership.
Membership at this level includes: