Zócalo Public Square

Even as digital technology has grown more sophisticated, accessible, and integral to our lives, social inequality has cast a deeper shadow across the United States in recent decades. Getting a quality education has become ever more essential for individual success and fulfillment. But can tech-enhanced education help break down—or perhaps even erase—our widening social divisions? That question was unpacked by a panel at a Zócalo/Arizona State University event titled “Can Digital Learning Dismantle the American Class System?” at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy in Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles. Moderator Goldie Blumenstyk, senior writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education, was joined by retired superintendent of the Coachella Valley Unified School District Darryl Adams, college provost at the University of Maryland University College Marie Cini, Arizona State University president Michael Crow, and Google chief education evangelist Jaime Casap to discuss how digital education can create connectivity and opportunities for people across social classes.

What Does Blue Mean?

What Does Blue Mean?

Much like our 21-century global village, the ancient world wrestled over issues of free trade, self-aggrandizing elites, destabilizing religious conflict, and how to treat refugees fleeing wars and unstable environments. What can antique societies teach us today about how to cope with such challenges? This was the fundamental question in a lively Zócalo/ Getty “Open Art” event titled “What Can the Ancient World Teach Us About Globalization?” Moderator Margot Roosevelt, economy reporter for the Orange County Register, was joined by Roger Bagnall, a classics scholar at New York University, Grant Parker, a classical philologist at Stanford University, and Jan Nederveen Pieterse, a scholar of globalization, development and cultural anthropology at the University of California Santa Barbara, to discuss globalization’s benefits and discontents, in the distant past and in our own pressing time.

Much like our 21-century global village, the ancient world wrestled over issues of free trade, self-aggrandizing elites, destabilizing religious conflict, and how to treat refugees fleeing wars and unstable environments. What can antique societies teach us today about how to cope with such challenges? This was the fundamental question in a lively Zócalo/ Getty “Open Art” event titled “What Can the Ancient World Teach Us About Globalization?” Moderator Margot Roosevelt, economy reporter for the Orange County Register, was joined by Roger Bagnall, a classics scholar at New York University, Grant Parker, a classical philologist at Stanford University, and Jan Nederveen Pieterse, a scholar of globalization, development and cultural anthropology at the University of California Santa Barbara, to discuss globalization’s benefits and discontents, in the distant past and in our own pressing time.

Princeton University sociologist Mitchell Duneier visited Zócalo at MOCA Grand Avenue to discuss how the ghetto was invented as a place and an idea. The story stretches from 16th-century Venice, Italy, to contemporary urban America, with stops in between in Nazi Germany and among mid-century University of Chicago social scientists. Dueneier is the author of Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea, winner of the seventh annual Zócalo Public Square Book Prize, which is awarded to the year’s nonfiction book that most enhances our understanding of community and the forces that strengthen or undermine human connectedness and social cohesion.

Princeton University sociologist Mitchell Duneier visited Zócalo at MOCA Grand Avenue to discuss how the ghetto was invented as a place and an idea. The story stretches from 16th-century Venice, Italy, to contemporary urban America, with stops in between in Nazi Germany and among mid-century University of Chicago social scientists. Dueneier is the author of Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea, winner of the seventh annual Zócalo Public Square Book Prize, which is awarded to the year’s nonfiction book that most enhances our understanding of community and the forces that strengthen or undermine human connectedness and social cohesion.

Americans talk a lot about the importance of good citizenship. But what does it mean to be a good citizen? By many measures, we may be falling short. American voter turnout is low compared to other nations, and in online discussion we’re quick to attack others who disagree with our point of view. How have Americans defined and lived citizenship, past and present? Are we really less civil now than we were in previous eras? The Washington Post “Civilities” columnist Steven Petrow, Texas A&M University historian of American political rhetoric Jennifer Mercieca, Western Washington University historian of civil society and author of Creating a Nation of Joiners Johann N. Neem, and former Oklahoma Congressman Mickey Edwards discuss whether it’s possible—and if, so, how—to raise American standards of citizenship.

Americans talk a lot about the importance of good citizenship. But what does it mean to be a good citizen? By many measures, we may be falling short. American voter turnout is low compared to other nations, and in online discussion we’re quick to attack others who disagree with our point of view. How have Americans defined and lived citizenship, past and present? Are we really less civil now than we were in previous eras? The Washington Post “Civilities” columnist Steven Petrow, Texas A&M University historian of American political rhetoric Jennifer Mercieca, Western Washington University historian of civil society and author of Creating a Nation of Joiners Johann N. Neem, and former Oklahoma Congressman Mickey Edwards discuss whether it’s possible—and if, so, how—to raise American standards of citizenship.

Virtually every U.S. President in the modern era has tried in some way to assert executive authority over Congress and the courts, the other two branches of government. But is the White House’s growing clout upsetting our system of checks and balances? This was the question at the heart of a lively Zócalo/UCLA event entitled “Does the Expansion of Presidential Power Threaten the Constitution?” before a packed house at the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles. Moderator Ronald Brownstein, senior editor of The Atlantic and a CNN senior political analyst, was joined by John T. Woolley, a University of California at Santa Barbara political scientist and co-director of the American Presidency Project website, Joel Aberbach, director of UCLA’s Center for American Politics and Public Policy, UCLA political scientist Lynn Vavreck, and UCLA constitutional law scholar Adam Winkler, to discuss how and why recent presidents have done end-runs around other government branches.