Lectures on Public Policy

2026

Juliet B. Schor, Professor of Sociology, Boston College, "Rethinking Platform Labor" 

2024

Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, "Multilateralism Under Attack: What Will Be the Human and Political Cost of Efforts to Dismantle UNRWA?"

 Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age, "'This isn't a new weapon, it is a new world'—Three Things Oppenheimer Tells us About Tech"

 2023

Anna Tsing, Professor of Anthropology at University of California, Santa Cruz, "Patchy Anthropocene: The Feral Impacts of Infrastructure"

2022

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Professor of African-American Studies at Princeton University and 2021 MacArthur Fellow, “Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership”

2021

Naomi Oreskes, Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University, "Can Science Be Saved?"

2020

Nicholas Lemann, Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism at Columbia University, "The Financial Economy: Where It Came from and What Might Come Next"

2017

Thomas Piketty, Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and at the Paris School of Economics, "Reflections on Inequality and Capital in the 21st Century"

2014

Barbara Arnwine, President and Executive Director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, "The State of Democracy and Voting in a Post-Shelby Era"

2013

Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, "What Rules Should Govern Drones and the Broader ‘War’ on Terrorism?"

2012

Owen M. Fiss, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law and Professorial Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School, "The Lives of Others"

2011

Maude Barlow, Chair of the Council of Canadians and Chair of Food and Water Watch, "The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water"

2010

James Hansen, climatologist and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, "Human-Made Climate Change: A Moral, Political, and Legal Issue"

2009

David Cole, National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, "Torture and Accountability in the 'War on Terror': What Should Be Done?"

2008

Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Chancellor of the University of Dublin, "Human Rights Challenges in the Next Decade"

2007

Lakhdar Brahimi, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Algeria and Chair of the United Nations Panel on Peace Operations, "Afghanistan and Iraq: Failed States or Failed Wars?"