RUSSELL JACOBY ON DIVERSITY: THE ECLIPSE OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN A GLOBAL ERA
March 26, Thursday, 7:30 pm – Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley
Diversity. You’ve heard the term everywherein the news, in the universities, at the television awards shows. Maybe even in the corporate world, where diversity initiatives have become de rigueur. But what does the term actually mean? Where does it come from? What are its intellectual precedents? Moreover, how do we square our love affair with diversity with the fact that the world seems to be becoming more and more, well, homogeneous? With a lucid, straightforward prose that rises above the noise, one of America’s greatest intellectual gadflies, Russell Jacoby, takes these questions squarely on. Discussing diversity (or lack thereof) in language, fashion, childhood experience, political structure, and the history of ideas, Jacoby offers a surprising and penetrating analysis of our cultural moment. In an age where our public thinkers seem to be jumping over one another to have the latest correct opinion, Jacoby offers a most dangerous, and liberating, injunction: to stop and think.
Russell Jacoby has written essays, op-eds and book reviews for newspapers and magazines from Los Angeles Times to The New Republic and Harper’s. The topics of his books range from the place of psychology in American society (Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology) to the role of utopian thought (The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in the Age of Apathy) and the origins of violence (Bloodlust: On the Roots of Violence from Cain and Abel to the Present). His The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe introduced a term that has been picked up everywhere”public intellectual”and is considered an essential text in American letters. His books have been translated into a dozen languages. Originally from New York, he has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Rochester, where he worked with Christopher Lasch. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches history at UCLA. In 2017 Jacoby was short-listed for the Times Literary Supplement’s All Authors Must Have Prizes Prize.
GRETCHEN SORIN: DRIVING WHILE BLACK: HOW AFRICAN AMERICAN LIFE WAS PROFOUNDLY CHANGED BY THE AUTOMOBILE
March 11, Wednesday, 7:30 pm – Kehilla Synagogue, 1300 Grand Avenue, Piedmont
How the automobile fundamentally changed African American lifethe true history beyond the Best Picturewinning movie.
The ultimate symbol of independence and possibility, the automobile has shaped this country from the moment the first Model T rolled off Henry Fords assembly line. Yet cars have always held distinct importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the many dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to enjoy, in some measure, the freedom of the open road. Gretchen Sorin recovers a forgotten history of black motorists, and recounts their creation of a parallel, unseen world of travel guides, black only hotels, and informal communications networks that kept black drivers safe. At the heart of this story is Victor and Alma Greens famous Green Book, begun in 1936, which made possible that most basic American right, the family vacation, and encouraged a new method of resisting oppression. Enlivened by Sorins personal history, Driving While Black opens an entirely new view onto the African American experience, and shows why travel was so central to the Civil Rights movement.
Gretchen Sorin is distinguished professor and director of the Cooperstown Graduate Program of the State University of New York. She has curated innumerable exhibits-including with the Smithsonian, the Jewish Museum and the New York State Historical Association-and lives in upstate New York.
HERFEST 2020: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY CELEBRATION IN SAN FRANCISCO
Saturday March 07 3-11pm – El Rio, 3158 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110$45
HerFest 2020: International Women’s Day in San Francisco
Join San Francisco’s Women’s Day kick-off! Enjoy sisterly celebration as we begin a new era with ritual, art and music.
This year of 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment declaring the right to vote for women. However, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the United States Constitution has still not been ratified.
Join us as we dance, celebrate and demand equality! Live music, playshops, vendors, speakers, and more!
Doors open at 3 pm & ceremony at 6 pm.
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