Past Events

Can Decolonization Explain Everything? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian
Los Angeles In-Person | Streaming Online

Can Decolonization Explain Everything?

Join us in person or live online for this program, and please note the earlier time – 6pm PST.

People place blame for inequality, climate change, political polarization, and other current woes on all kinds of bad actors and influences: authoritarians, corporations, globalization, social media. But the decline of Western empires during the 20th century was arguably the catalyst for it …

What Is the Value of Art? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian
Los Angeles In-Person | Streaming Online

What Is the Value of Art?

The headlines that make breaking news in the art world most often concern a piece’s financial worth, which nearly always means how much a private collector paid for it. But for most of us, the value of art has very little to do with a dollar amount. Rather, art provides an avenue to a diverse range of critical discussions, evokes …

How Has Computer Code Shaped Humanity? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian
Los Angeles In-Person | Streaming Online

How Has Computer Code Shaped Humanity?

Nearly 80 years after engineers programmed the first electronic computers, most of us still regard machines as supremely rational collections of electrical circuits, speaking in binary “1”s and “0”s. It can be easy to forget that software, the digital instructions that tell computers how to do their jobs, springs from the minds of living, breathing people. And these coders imbue …

A Special Zócalo/Da Poetry Lounge Spoken Word Performance: Does Democracy Need Poets? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian
Los Angeles In-Person | Streaming Online

A Special Zócalo/Da Poetry Lounge Spoken Word Performance: Does Democracy Need Poets?

As long as there have been poems, there have been political poems: verses, intended to be heard aloud, meant to sway opinion and inspire action. Poetry played a crucial role in the Athenian democracy of ancient Greece; throughout American history, poet luminaries such as Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and Maya Angelou have employed the power of the pen to influence …

Bureaucracy Under Populist Rule? – Rubina Zern-Breuer, Michael Bauer & Joe Mathews in a Fishbowl Discussion. | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian
Los Angeles | In-Person

Can Public Bureaucracy Survive Populism?

The German sociologist Max Weber once described the regularity of public administration as protection against arbitrariness, since everyone has to play by the same rational rules. But does this definition still hold up today, with rising populism on both sides of the Atlantic targeting public administration? What is the role of bureaucracy when the legitimacy of electoral processes is constantly …

How Can Women and Girls Win in Iran? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian
Los Angeles In-Person | Streaming Online

How Can Women and Girls Win in Iran?

This event is generously sponsored by Pedram Salimpour.

In Iran, women have stood as a first line of opposition against government repression for at least 150 years, advocating for social and economic equality, pushing back against discriminatory Islamist edicts, and fighting for a new vision of politics. Today, young women are pouring into Iranian streets again, using phones and social media …