When: Thursday, October 17, 4:30-6pm
Where: Centers for Race Studies/Gender, 1st floor: 5733 South University Avenue, Chicago, IL
About the Event: In Blacks In and Out of the Left (2013), Michael C. Dawson investigates the causes and consequences of the decline of black radicalism as a force in American politics and argues that the conventional left has failed to take race sufficiently seriously as a historical force in reshaping American institutions, politics, and civil society. In this book presentation, Dawson will be joined by Political Science Professor Robert Gooding-Williams, who will provide commentary after Dawson’s presentation. The event is co-sponsored by the University of Chicago’s Human Rights Program, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture, and the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT).
Michael C. Dawson is the John D. MacArthur Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the College at the University of Chicago, as well as the founding and current Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the university. From 2000-04 Dawson and Lawrence Bobo conducted six public opinion studies on the racial divide in the United States, creating the richest data on this issue that exists. His research interests have included the development of quantitative models of African American political behavior and public opinion, the political effects of urban poverty and African American political ideology. Most recently he is the author of Not in Our Lifetimes: The Future of Black Politics, which looks at political opinions among blacks in the last decade and contrasts them with white attitudes. His other books include Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies and Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics.
Professor Dawson’s lecture is the second in a 2013-14 series, “Hard Times: Black Appeals Local and Global,” presented by the Human Rights Program and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture. This project is inspired by An Appeal to the World, the 1947 petition to the United Nations Human Rights Commission by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, coordinated by Dr. W.E.B. DuBois. A culminating conference in 2014 will examine struggles for human rights by African Americans locally and internationally.
Free and open to the public. Book signing and reception will follow the lecture.
View or download the event flyer here.
For more information, please contact Yaniv Kleinman at 773-702-1114 or ykleinman@uchicago.edu Persons with disabilities may need assistance should contact Yaniv Kleinman for assistance.