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Art historian Sarah Lewis (Harvard University) and architect Michael Murphy (MASS Design Group) discuss the art and architecture of social justice in America. How do our artistic works create the fabric of national memory both cherished and shameful? How do our structures provide the framework of collective conscience? How does culture help us learn from history and inform...
Can art tackle some of the most difficult social-justice questions we face today?
Clint Smith is a high school educator, a Harvard PhD candidate, and a slam poet. In a series of spoken-word performances, Smith confronts inequality in American society. His poetry touches on black parenting, social justice, and violence against kids of color. Following his performance, three high school students from the South Washington, DC, area are interviewed about ho...
The Poetry Jam Session brings together some of the nation’s leading young poets for a spirited 80-minutes of cross-disciplinary performance, collaboration, and discussion. Lyrical and musical acrobatics will introduce ideas and issues central to this year’s arts track, bringing poetic life to the intersection of art and justice. This session is led by dancer turned directo...
NBCUniversal News Group recently announced the honorees for its prime-time special, “Inspiring America: The Inspiration List.” NBC News’ Tom Llamas brings this conversation featuring Americans making a difference to Aspen. The panel includes environmental and climate justice activist Catherine Flowers; Susan Burton, creator of the nonprofit A New Way of Life; and actor Joh...
Atlanta-based defense attorney and #BillionDollarLawyer Drew Findling discusses the intersection of criminal justice, race, and hip-hop. These issues, common themes in hip-hop music, reflect deeply rooted societal schisms which play out endlessly in the collateral consequences of criminal conviction and mass incarceration. This session will explore how recent events like M...
Like all institutions operating these days, museums have had to fundamentally shift to respond in real time to a global pandemic, a reckoning around racial justice, and a crisis around the very idea of truth. We often mistakenly think about museums as places for dusty relics. But on the contrary, they have an important job to do in helping us to contextualize what is happe...
“Truth,” wrote Frederick Douglass, “belongs, like the earth, to all the earth’s inhabitants.” In the search for truth, how do storytellers of all types “pay honor to the full humanity” of the communities they seek to represent? That is the obligation that author and historian Sarah Lewis described in a survey of photography of the black experience that she edited for a spe...
Before signing the $1.2 trillion dollar Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, President Biden put Mitch Landrieu in charge of executing its vision. In this role, the former New Orleans mayor oversees the biggest investment in American infrastructure in generations. With promises of generating millions of high-paying jobs, fixing supply chains, and repairing America’s roa...
How can comedy influence our thinking and challenge our prejudices?
How is art confronting a racist system in America? Artists are using their craft to push the country forward in a critical moment.
Two authors of acclaimed but thoroughly different memoirs of growing up in rural American communities dive into their experiences growing up in the heartland, what they think urban Americans get wrong about our rural people and places, and how they are using their platforms to address some of the most complex challenges that rural communities face today.
Within our lifetimes, AI will, by design, begin to behave unpredictably, thinking and acting in ways which defy human logic. Big tech companies may be inadvertently building and enabling vast arrays of intelligent systems that don't share our motivations, desires, or hopes for the future of humanity. Is it too late to change course and realize a human-centered future for a...
Associate Professor, History of Art and Architecture and African and African American Studies, Harvard University; Founder, The Vision & Justice Project
Student Poet, Creative Young Leaders Alliance, The Aspen Institute