Solidarity: A Discussion between Astra Taylor and Eric Klinenberg

Social solidarity has come to define much of the public’s response to crises of the 21st century. In the face of catastrophe, communities around the country have banded together to protect each other in the face of uncertainty.

Join the Institute for Public Knowledge for a conversation on social solidarity with Astra Taylor and Eric Klinenberg moderated by Chris Hayes, on September 16th at 5:30 PM.

Astra Taylor is a documentary filmmaker, writer, and political organizer. Her new book, The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart (House of Anansi Press, 2023), takes a curious, critical, and ultimately hopeful look at the uniquely modern concept of “manufactured insecurity” that drives much of our politics and economy. The ideas in the book form the basis of this year’s CBC Massey Lectures, an annual series where speakers are invited to explore the most important issues of the day. Mixing social critique, memoir, history, political analysis, and philosophy, this genre-bending book rethinks both insecurity and security from the ground up while illuminating a path toward meaningful change. By facing our existential insecurity and embracing our vulnerability, Taylor argues, we can begin to develop more caring, inclusive, and sustainable forms of security to help us better weather the challenges ahead. She is the director, most recently, of What Is Democracy? and the author of Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone and the American Book Award winning The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. She is co-founder of the Debt Collective, a union for debtors, and contributed the foreword to the group’s new book, Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: The Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition.

Eric Klinenberg is Helen Gould Shepard Professor of Social Science and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the author of 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed (Knopf, 2024), Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life (Crown, 2018), Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone (The Penguin Press, 2012), Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media (Metropolitan Books, 2007), and Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2002), and co-author, with Aziz Ansari, of the New York Times #1 bestseller Modern Romance (The Penguin Press, 2015). His scholarly work has been published in journals including the American Sociological Review, Theory and Society, and Ethnography, and he has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and This American Life.

Chris Hayes hosts the Emmy Award-winning “All In with Chris Hayes” on MSNBC, where he is also host of “Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast.” He is also editor-at-large of “The Nation” and author of two New York Times bestsellers: “A Colony in a Nation” (W.W. Norton & Company, 2017) and “Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy” (Crown Publishing Group, 2012). Hayes is a former Fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. From 2008-2010, he was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. From 2005 to 2006, he was a Schumann Center Writing Fellow at In These Times. Since 2002, Hayes has written on a wide variety of political and social issues, from union organizing and economic democracy, to the intersection of politics and technology. His essays, articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Time, The Nation, The American Prospect, The New Republic, The Washington Monthly, The Guardian, and The Chicago Reader. Hayes grew up in the Bronx and graduated from Brown University in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy. He lives in New York with his wife and three children.