Events

Details on our past events are here. Many of them have been video-recorded; you will see links to those events on the past events page or visit our video page.  If you subscribe to our YouTube channel, you will be notified when new videos are available.

Fall 2019 

Thursday, September 19 I 12:00-1:00pm

Center for Right Wing Studies Colloquia Presents: A "Brown Bag" discussion 

Patterns of Conversion in the Radical Conservative Tradition

Eliah Bures, CRWS Visiting Scholar

"My work offers a new interpretation of the development of right-wing ideology in the 20th century. I argue that fascism, though defeated on the battlefield in WWII, survived the war by adapting to changing times and reinventing itself as an intellectual and cultural movement. Faced after 1945 with a climate unfavorable to right-wing mass politics, the far right’s writers and thinkers regrouped as a countercultural network of defiant “outsiders.” Organized through journals and institutes, they worked to cultivate followers and shift cultural narratives. My research uncovers how radical conservative intellectuals came to understand themselves in countercultural terms. I focus on the far right’s “emotional community” and on the ways friendship has shaped its social imagination. Friendship has long been central to right-wing thought, appearing in its attraction to elitist cliques, male bonding, and the “friend-foe distinction” as the essence of politics. Friendship proved no less crucial to right-wing intellectual counterculture after 1945, providing solidarity and mutual understanding to those who hungered for belonging, yet felt out of step with the times."

Duster Room, ISSI, 2420 Bowditch Street

Feel free to bring your lunch. 

Center for Right Wing Studies Colloquia Series:

After Obamageddon: Reflections on the Rise of Right-Wing 'Doomsday' Prepping in 21st Century America

Michael Mills, Lecturer in Criminology, School of Social Policy, Sociology, and Social Research, University of Kent

This talk draws on a sustained ethnography of American 'Doomsday' prepping. Drawing on fieldwork taking place in 2014 and 2018, it pays particular attention to the political dimensions of doomsday prepping culture, including the political discontents that many preppers identify as energizing their activities (under both Obama and Trump). The talk will highlight ways in which the fears of many American preppers align with relatively mainstream right-wing politics (rather than more fringe perspectives with which prepping tends to be associated in much academic and popular commentary). That said, it will also contend that prepping's status as a 'mainstream' phenomenon is dependent on a continually shifting right-wing mainstream that increasingly embraces Far and Extreme Right thinking. It will conclude by offering some thoughts as to how prepping culture may change in the future – specifically as the USA heads into (and beyond) the 2020 election.

Shorb House (Latinx Research Center), 2547 Channing Way

Wednesday, November 20 I 4:00-5:30pm

Institute for the Study of Societal Issues Colloquia Series:

The Trouble with Inequality

Jeff Manza, Professor of Sociology, NYU

Growing support for right-wing populist candidates and parties around the world raises questions about how citizens understand and conceptualize inequality. Many political-economic theories of democratic responsiveness emphasize the capacities of citizens to connect major societal changes with demands for new government policies. Rapidly rising high-end income and wealth inequality over the past 40 years has, however, not prompted Americans to demand significant changes in government policies relating to inequality, at least in their traditional social democratic form. This is true even in recent years, in which politicians and the media have significantly increased the amount of inequality talk they engage in. In this talk, I present evidence and analyze the nature of non-responsiveness to rising inequality in the United States. Three factors – rising partisanship, declining links between income and redistributive attitudes, and optimism about mobility chances – have contributed to preventing aggregate responsiveness in the way that previous theories have predicted. I conclude with some speculations about the implications for redistributive policy proposals in the future.

Academic Innovation Studio, 117 Dwinelle Hall

Co-sponsored by Goldman School of Public Policy, Center for Right-Wing Studies