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Atlanta-based defense attorney and #BillionDollarLawyer Drew Findling discusses the intersection of criminal justice, race, and hip-hop. These issues, common themes in hip-hop music, reflect deeply rooted societal schisms which play out endlessly in the collateral consequences of criminal conviction and mass incarceration. This session will explore how recent events like M...

In 1957, George Balanchine and his fellow Russian émigré Igor Stravinsky astonished audiences with their revolutionary ballet Agon for the New York City Ballet. With a score combining French Renaissance dance melodies and twelve-tone invention, Agon's diverse cast wore simple black-and-white practice clothes and performed with unadorned clarity on a spare stage, laying bar...

Images communicate truths, and also lies. Learning to pay attention to photographs can help us discern. An art and cultural historian and a visual artist host a master class on how to read the visual record in the context of racial justice and equity.

Originally recorded by Sydney Pollack over two days at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, LA, in 1972, and then brought to life decades later by producer Alan Elliot, Amazing Grace is a raw and unfettered documentary of the live recording of the incomparable gospel music album. Join us for a screening of the film that captures the majestic Franklin at the h...

You may not know what typeface this sentence is written in, but typography is crucial to how we convey, process and retain information. How has the form evolved? Hear from design experts and a graphic-arts great as they trace the roots of typography from Gutenberg to Bauhaus and beyond, drawing on how innovation in design is always in conversation with the past. Book sign...

Journalists Michele Norris, Jose Antonio Vargas, and Amar Bakshi have all worked to create global megaphones for sharing experiences and stories that too often go unnoticed. Norris’s Race Card Project, Vargas’s #EmergingUS, and Bakshi’s Portals provide egalitarian podiums where the most difficult conversations around race, immigration, religion, and identity can happen. No...

When the ranks of a cultural institution or a creative field tend toward high levels of homogeneity in terms of race, class, and/or gender, what are the challenges and opportunities faced by the people who are placed in gatekeeper positions within those institutions or fields who don’t fit that homogenous mold?

Audrie & Daisy is an urgent real-life drama that examines the ripple effects on families, friends, schools, and communities when two underage young women find that sexual crimes against them have been caught on camera. From acclaimed filmmakers Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk (The Island President, The Rape of Europa), Audrie & Daisy—which made its world premiere at the 2016 Sun...

For more than three decades, artist Carrie Mae Weems has created a body of work — including photographs, fabric, text, audio, and video — that probes the fault lines of race, gender, class, politics, and power. In this session, the Prix de Rome and MacArthur Fellowship winner stages a collaborative performance of her work and discusses how it merges the personal and the po...

Oscar-winning filmmaker John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, All Is by My Side) is known for his uncompromising and thought-provoking work examining some of society’s most pressing issues: immigration, sex trafficking, slavery, and race relations, among others. Ridley is joined by frequent collaborator, Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning actress Felicity Huffman, in conversation abo...

Clint Smith and Reginald Dwayne Betts work at the crossroads of multiple disciplines. Both men have pursued graduate degrees in the Ivy League: Smith is working toward his PhD at Harvard and Betts recently obtained his JD at Yale. But they also stay true to their creative lives, publishing and performing poetry in which they grapple with issues such as politics, inequality...

Two authors of acclaimed but thoroughly different memoirs of growing up in rural American communities dive into their experiences growing up in the heartland, what they think urban Americans get wrong about our rural people and places, and how they are using their platforms to address some of the most complex challenges that rural communities face today. 

Although death is every bit as much a part of life as birth, we pretend it isn’t there. Perhaps it’s time that changed. The soon-to-be released HBO documentary Alternate Endings: Six New Ways to Die in America, tackles this final taboo. Join the filmmakers for a sneak peek and a frank discussion about end of life options. How might we design more meaningful deaths?

“Self-care” is the buzzword of the moment. But far before face masks and digital detoxes, ancient philosophers were thinking of ways to enhance human flourishing. How do their ideas match up to today? Yale philosophy professor Tamar Gendler sits down with author Bruce Feiler, who traveled across the U.S. collecting stories on how we deal with life’s transitions. From mille...

The threads that connect humans to their natural environments have frayed, and some have completely severed. In an attempt to mend those we still can, designers are forging meaningful connections with nature to make reparations. Their collaborative processes — working with nature and in teams across multiple disciplines — are optimistic, but urgent. In this session, learn...

As virtual and augmented reality technologies mature, the line between the physical world and a simulated world begins to blur. By way of amusing features like face filters and animated avatars, many users are embracing augmented realities on a regular basis, sometimes without even realizing it. Join a panel of technologists to discover how these platforms and products are...

What is design’s role in our lives today? How will it evolve in the future? How can design help us address the tumultuous changes we now face? Award-winning design critic Alice Rawsthorn delved into these key themes to write her latest book, Design as an Attitude. From the deepening environmental and refugee crises to the rise of inequality, intolerance, and prejudice to t...

Within our lifetimes, AI will, by design, begin to behave unpredictably, thinking and acting in ways which defy human logic. Big tech companies may be inadvertently building and enabling vast arrays of intelligent systems that don't share our motivations, desires, or hopes for the future of humanity. Is it too late to change course and realize a human-centered future for a...

Where does classical liberalism come from? What comfort and lessons are we to take from our forebearers? In the aftermath of the 2016 election, acclaimed author and essayist Adam Gopnik traced the moral and philosophical trajectory of liberalism as a way to contextualize the election for his daughter. Gopnik takes the audience on a tour of the great places and people who c...

During a personal low point of loneliness and pain, David Brooks wanted to write his way to a better life. For five years, he did just that, researching and writing about people who’ve lived joyous and committed lives, exploring the wisdom they offer on finding purpose and living well. The result is his latest book, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life. Brooks s...