The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science hosts the free webcast series, "Social Science for a World in Crises." Upcoming talks and video recordings can be found here.

The COVID pandemic is a crisis affecting not only public health but also governments, economies, and societies worldwide. It disrupts virtually everything that enables us to work, learn, play, and thrive. It also amplifies multiple vulnerabilities that existed prior to it, exposing historic and persistent inequalities, discrimination, and disadvantage in numerous forms. The pandemic additionally provides a complex setting for global movements unfolding in its shadow – the upsurge in extremist populism and bitter polarization, accelerated demands for racial justice, contestation of elections, and insurrection abetted by disinformation and conspiracy theories. Such events, crises, and interactions among them bring the U.S. and the world to a dangerous moment. But they also present unique opportunities to confront challenges with needed correctives to political, economic, and social infrastructures. No institutions, behaviors, or beliefs should be exempt from reconsideration.

Launched in 2020, the Center’s webcast series offers themed public discussions. CASBS-affiliated scholars and practitioners explain what brought us to this moment and explore how to generate realistic, durable change in service of more prosperous, equitable, inclusive, and human centered societies.