Gara LaMarche is a Senior Fellow at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. In the Spring 2013 semester, he is the first Visiting Scholar at the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at the University of California, Berkeley.
In his time at Berkeley, LaMarche will give a series of three public lectures. Characterizing them, he writes:
“This trio of connected lectures comes at a point in my career, after nearly 40 years of activism, teaching and philanthropy on behalf of human rights and social justice, when I have had an opportunity to reflect on lessons and connections. One will focus on democracy and philanthropy, and whether they are compatible; a second will discuss the spread of punitive thinking and approaches beyond the prison-industrial complex to schools and other settings; and the third will assess the state of the progressive vision, and explore some of the ways in which some social movements may finally be moving past their traditional issue silos. A common theme through each is my disquiet at some of the ways in which communities of which I have been a part, or been allied, have sometimes strayed from larger principles, muted significant stresses and differences, or failed to reckon with deep contradictions. I want to do some of that in these talks, and invite my colleagues and allies to join the conversation.”
