What makes democracy work? Why does American democracy seem to be in crisis? And could the key to America’s most urgent problems be as simple as joining a club?

Join Brown Votes and Brown 2026 for a viewing and discussion of Join or Die, an Emmy-nominated documentary film that explores the decline of American civic engagement and puts forth a radical argument: that the fate of democracy in the U.S. depends on each of us becoming joiners in the civic sphere.

Weaving stories of ordinary Americans from rural Michigan to southern Texas to Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland, ME, Join or Die charts a half-century of civic unraveling through the scholarship of Harvard social scientist Robert Putnam, whose groundbreaking 2000 book, Bowling Alone, sparked a national conversation about the importance of community connection for preserving and protecting democracy.

This event is co-sponsored by Brown 2026, a campus-wide initiative to demonstrate the important role of research and teaching universities in fostering open and democratic societies.

Space is limited so reserve your spot as soon as possible. The film viewing will be followed by lunch and facilitated discussion. Click here to see the lunch menu.

Join Brown 2026 and the Discovery Through Dialogue project for Cross Talk: A Whole Campus, Distinct Disciplines Approach

April 3, 2026, at 5pm: Cross Talk on Labor

On the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, Brown 2026 seeks to highlight the role of the research university within a democratic society. In the spirit of e pluribus unum, our many disciplinary approaches can foster a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts when it comes to tackling urgent and enduring questions, topics, and challenges. At an institution defined by a spirit of curiosity and open inquiry, faculty pursue different modes of investigation, characterized by different ways of posing questions and different methods of finding answers. These disciplinary commitments strengthen Brown’s mission of “discovering, communicating, and preserving knowledge.”

To bring more attention to our distinct disciplinary approaches, Brown 2026 is convening Cross Talk, a series of moderated conversations in which faculty from across the university explain their approaches to a subject or issue.

The first Cross Talk takes on an enduring aspect of the human experience: labor. From the Biblical decree that we shall “eat bread by the sweat of our brow” to the frequent declarations that “the end of work” is near, the issue of labor has preoccupied scholars across the disciplines. It is a topic that engages anthropologists, sociologists, and economists, and artists, philosophers, and literary theorists. It compels the attention of engineers, and computer scientists as readily as it does scholars who investigate labor law, occupational safety, craft traditions, and political movements. Indeed, few topics organize more research across more segments of the university than labor and its experience, its meanings, its valuation, and its potentialities.

This event is part of the Discovery Through Dialogue project, which furthers Brown’s mission by amplifying and fostering new opportunities for meaningful conversations across a wide range of perspectives. Ensuring that Brown continues to unlock knowledge and understanding through productive and respectful dialogue is a shared project of our campus community.

Our first Cross Talk will feature:

Serena Booth, Assistant Professor of Computer Science: Serena Booth is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science. She works on fundamental questions in artificial intelligence (AI): how do we specify our goals for these systems, and how should AI interpret our ambiguous, conflicting, and context-sensitive specifications? Serena also studies and addresses the social consequences of building and releasing AI systems, focusing on issues of consumer protection, economic policy, and labor. She earned her PhD from MIT, and previously worked as an AI Policy Advisor in the United States Senate.

Rebecca Liu, Assistant Professor of English: Liu specializes in Asian American literature and global histories of capitalism. Her current book project identifies the centrality of Asian indenture and the contract form for understanding Asian American racialization, labor, and social reproduction from the nineteenth century to the present.

Laura López-Sanders, Associate Professor of Sociology: Laura López-Sanders is an associate professor of sociology at Brown University whose research examines how organizational practices and public policy produce racialized inequality and workplace precarity. Her book, The Manufacturing of Job Displacement (NYU Press, 2024), shows how managers leverage immigration status to restructure shop-floor power and deepen workforce segmentation. Her current mixed-methods project combines American Time Use Survey data, interviews, and data from digital platforms to examine how algorithmic management, gender, and migration status shape time poverty among ride-hail and delivery workers.

Erica Walker, RGSS Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, School of Public Health: Walker is the RGSS Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and founder of Community Noise Lab. Her work is centered on community identified environmental health issues and supports community using real-time monitoring, community surveying, epidemiological studies, and meaningful engagement. She believes in problem solving, infrastructure building, frank conversations, self-reflection, the iterative process, and avoiding dysfunction.

Moderated by Seth Rockman, George L. Littlefield Professor of American History: Rockman is a labor historian whose research highlights the histories of capitalism and class, and the importance of slavery to the understanding of both. His books include Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore and Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery.

This event will be held at the John Carter Brown Library (94 George Street) with refreshments to follow. 

Join us for an Emerging Scholars Talk by Aabid Allibhai, Junior Fellow at the University of Michigan Society of Fellows and Faculty Fellow at the University of Michigan Law School. Aabid Allibhai is a public historian of the Atlantic World. He is a Junior Fellow at the University of Michigan Society of Fellows and a Faculty Fellow at the University of Michigan Law School, where he is currently writing a book on Black legal and political activism in Revolutionary Massachusetts. His extensive research on the lives of enslaved people in New England has been profiled in the Boston Globe and the Bay State Banner. He earned his JD and PhD in African American Studies from Harvard University.

This talk illuminates the rich history of Black legal and political activism in Revolutionary Massachusetts. It explores the antislavery campaign of free and enslaved people in the years before the Revolutionary War. Through petitioning the General Court and local towns, lobbying lawmakers, and launching freedom suits, among other things, Africans in Massachusetts weakened slavery’s foundations and infused their visions of justice and right into Massachusetts law and society.

Lunch provided with registration.

Yong Chen, Ph.D.,
Professor of Biostatistics and Senior Scholar
Center for Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics
University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine

 

Talk Title: Principled AI

Abstract: We are entering an era where artificial intelligence is transforming science, medicine, and society, yet the enduring principles of statistics remain central to ensuring validity, interpretability, and trust. This talk reflects on core statistical foundations, including error control and calibration, optimality and decision-theoretic framing, reproducibility and robustness, sampling, prior/empirical Bayes, modern statistical/mathematical computation, and the likelihood principle. And we will examine their continued impact in the age of AI. Through examples drawn from several clinical studies, the discussion will show how principled statistical thinking safeguards against bias while enabling innovation. These case studies illustrate that statisticians are not bystanders but essential architects of reliable evidence generation and decision-making in an AI-driven world.

Lunch will be provided*

Join the Brown University Library a for a one-day symposium on John Hay’s China Policy on Saturday, May 2, 2026, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Rockefeller Library.

A symposium across fields of study will feature talks by distinguished participants ranging from historians and a diplomat to musicians who will examine John Hay’s Open Door Policy through new research on diplomacy, empire, narrative-making, and global power. The event will also include a special musical component.

Free and open to the public. Hybrid event.

Sponsored by Brown University Library, Brown 2026, China Initiative, Cogut Institute for the Humanities, and UTRA.

Registration is required.

Please register using the RSVP form below.

Participants

Peter Perdue (Keynote)
Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University
“John Hay, China, and the World of the 1900s”

Matthew Mosca
Dau-lin Hsu Endowed Professor, Jackson School of International Studies and Associate Professor of History, University of Washington
“William W. Rockhill and the Conceptualization of the Qing Empire”

Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Distinguished Professor of History, University of California, Irvine
“The Boxer Uprising in the American Imagination”

Ambassador Chas Freeman
“The American Misimagination of China: Dealing with China When It’s Up, Down, and Ascendant”

Wang Lu
Composer and Associate Professor of Music, Brown University
“Resonance and Projection: From Yellow Music to Urban Sonic Memory”

Yang Jin
Pipa Faculty, Bard College Conservatory of Music — Performance

Benet Ge
Ph.D. Candidate, History of Art and Architecture, Brown University
“Edward Carrington’s Providence in China”

Adam Reiffen
Military Fellow, Watson School of International and Public Affairs, Brown University
“Who Opened the Door? Reexamining Outside Influences on John Hay’s China Policy”