Eric Klinenberg on Democracy, Division, and Deescalation

Join Eric Klinenberg, bestselling author and Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the Social Sciences at NYU, for a discussion of how distrust and polarization have transformed politics and culture, from the pandemic through today. Klinenberg, who has written award-winning books on cities, climate change, and civic life, will address the emerging threats and opportunities for New Orleans and other American cities in the crosshairs of crisis.  

After Klinenberg’s remarks, Tulane’s Ilana Horwitz, a sociologist and an assistant professor of Jewish Studies, will lead a conversation with Klinenberg and the audience ranging from cities and climate to segregation and social infrastructure. 

Eric Klinenberg is Helen Gould Shepard Professor of Social Science and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the author of 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changes (2024), Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life (2018), Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone (2012), Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media ( 2007), and Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (2002), and co-author, with Aziz Ansari, of Modern Romance (2015). His scholarly work has been published in journals including the American Sociological Review, Theory and Society, and Ethnography, and he has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Rolling Stone, and This American Life.

Ilana Horwitz is a sociologist of education and religion, and serves as the Fields-Rayant Chair in Contemporary Jewish Life at Tulane University. Her books include God, Grades, and Graduation: Religion’s Surprising Impact on Academic Success (2022), The Entrepreneurial Scholar (2025), and Boys Alone, Girls Exhausted: The Hidden Architecture of Inequality in America (Forthcoming).  Her research been published in academic journals including the American Sociological Review, and in public outlets including the New York Times.

The School of Liberal Arts Dean’s Speaker Series brings prominent scholars, writers, and practitioners in the humanities, fine & performing arts and social sciences to Tulane University to foster an ongoing conversation about the vitality of the liberal arts in addressing topics that matter to society.

Talk takes place in Stone Auditorium (Room #210) in Woldenberg Art Center, followed by a reception in Room #204.