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Slavery & Its Legacies Symposium

Slavery, as an institution, traces its origins back to Mesopotamia in 3500 B.C. Slavery was abolished by most nations sometime in the 19th century. Slavery’s effects, however, persisted in many nations for decades — and still persist in various forms today. The Slavery and Its Legacies Symposium examines this historical persistence of institutionalized slavery, both in the United States and in other nations.

President Biden’s First 100 Days

William Resh (USC) with Christina Kinane (Yale) and Anne Joseph O'Connell (Stanford) will discuss some of the legal intricacies of the Vacancy Act, the strategic calculations that political actors might make regarding vacancies, and their impact on agency performance.

PIPE* Workshop: Volha Charnysh, MIT

Volha Charnysh, Assistant Professor of Political Science at MIT, will present Dispute Resolution in Heterogenous Societies.

Bedrosian Bookclub LIVE, emergent strategy

Virtual

Date: June 22, 2021 | 5:00pm PDT Location: Zoom Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown As we are coming out of the pandemic, we are facing really tough issues. Polarization is at a high point, political violence surrounds us, joblessness, homelessness, the country's need to face Read more…

PIPE Workshop: Zhao Li, Princeton

Zhao Li, Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, studies American politics and political economy with a focus on campaign finance in the United States. In particular, her research examines both institutional and behavioral factors that motivate campaign donors to give money to different types of recipients (candidates, interest groups, etc.), as well as the implications of these donations for different aspects of democratic representation in the U.S., including corporate political strategy, political extremism, and electoral accountability.

Free

Crying in H Mart: Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast

Virtual

Crying in H Mart: Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast. Presented by USC Visions and Voices: The Arts and Humanities Initiative and the Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies. Co-sponsored by the USC Bedrosian Center and Asian Pacific American Student Services. Sept. 7, 6 pm PT.

PIPE Workshop: Jake Grumbach, University of Washington

Virtual

Laboratories of Democratic Backsliding Using 61 indicators of democratic performance from 2000 to 2018, we develop a measure of subnational democratic performance, the State Democracy Index. We use this measure to test theories of democratic expansion and backsliding based in party competition, polarization, demographic change, and the group interests of Read more…

Free

PIPE Workshop: Leticia Arroyo Abad & Noel Maurer

Virtual

What Have the Americans Ever Done for Us? Lessons from the United States in Latin America, 1895-1929 The United States spent 20 years in Afghanistan attempting to achieve two interrelated aims: reduce the level of political instability and build Afghan state capacity. It partially succeeded in the first: the Afghan Read more…

Free

PIPE Workshop: Emily Sellars, Yale

Virtual

Fiscal Legibility and State Development: Theory and Evidence from Colonial Mexico We examine how fiscal legibility, the ability of a central government to observe local economic conditions for the purposes of taxation, shapes political centralization. When a ruler is unable to observe economic conditions, it can be preferable to grant Read more…

Free

PIPE Workshop: Anna Grzymala-Busse, Stanford

Virtual

Tilly goes to Church: the Medieval and Religious Roots of European State Formation Medieval religious rivalry fundamentally shaped European state formation. The single most powerful challenger to kings and emperors in the Middle Ages was the Catholic Church. To protect its interests and ensure its autonomy, the papacy deliberately fragmented Read more…

Free

PIPE Workshop: Michael Olson, Washington University – St. Louis

Virtual

"Restoration” and Representation: Legislative Consequences of Black Disfranchisement in the American South, 1879-1916 The restriction of African Americans' voting rights in the U.S. South in the decades following Reconstruction is the most significant instance of democratic backsliding in American history. Despite this, it remains unclear whether and to what extent Read more…

Free

Dividing Lines: Keeping Races in Their Places

Virtual

A book talk with USC Price PhD, Anthony W. Orlando!

More than fifty years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, American cities remain divided along the very same lines that this landmark legislation explicitly outlawed. Keeping Races in Their Places tells the story of these lines — who drew them, why they drew them, where they drew them, and how they continue to circumscribe residents’ opportunities to this very day.

Dividing Lines: Desegregation of California Public Schools

Virtual

Part two in our series, Dividing Lines, will focus on desegregation in Orange County. Bedrosian Faculty Affiliate, Anthony W. Orlando will speak with Janice Munemitsu about her book The Kindness of Color. In the book Munemitsu uncovers how two Orange County families became the faces of one of the most Read more…

Political Polarization Symposium

Virtual

We live in a polarized political age, where support for extreme political views has increased relative to support for moderate ones. In Congress, Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines than at any point since the end of Reconstruction. In the public, Republicans and Democrats are increasingly divided Read more…

Free

Bedrosian Center