Events & Calendars Saskia Sassen - "Globalism and Its Discontents: Point/Counterpoint with Ilan Stavans"

Join us as Professor Stavans speaks with sociologist and professor Saskia Sassen.

The "Globalism and Its Discontents: Point/Counterpoint" conversation series features Amherst College professor, and host of NEPR's In Contrast, Ilan Stavans and a guest engaging in thoughtful discussion and attempting to bridge the ideological divide growing in our nation.

The rise of populism worldwide today, personified by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, is a fierce reaction to globalism policies of the past few decades. Anti-immigration movements in Europe and the United States; assaults on free speech; racial profiling; polarized politics; intolerance for gender, economic and linguistic diversity; the building of walls and the renegotiation of international trade treaties; the tension between rural and urban communities; and the questioning of the basic tenets of pluralism are some of the symptoms. Democracy itself might be at peril.

Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and a member of its Committee on Global Thought, which she chaired till 2015. She is a student of cities, immigration and states in the world economy, with inequality, gendering and digitization three key variables running though her work. Born in the Netherlands, she grew up in Argentina and Italy, studied in France, was raised in five languages and began her professional life in the United States. She is the author of eight books and the editor or co-editor of three books. Together, her authored books are translated in over 20 languages. She has received many awards and honors, among them multiple doctorates honoris causa, the 2013 Principe de Asturias Prize in the Social Sciences, election to the Royal Academy of the Sciences of the Netherlands and being made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French government.

This event is free and open to the public.

"Point/Counterpoint" is co-sponsored by NEPR’s In Contrast and by a generous gift from 36 members of the 50th Reunion Class of 1970.

Find more information about the other speakers in the series href="https://www.amherst.edu/mm/564883">here.

Interviews with previous guests, and others, are available through Ilan Stavans' NEPR show In Contrast. Have a listen!