9:45 to 10:45 a.m. CDT

Tracey Meares

Tracey L. Meares focuses her research on understanding how members of the public think about their relationships with legal authorities such as police, prosecutors, and judges. She has worked extensively with the federal government, including for the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs Science Advisory Board. Professor Meares is the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor and a Founding Director of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale University Law School.

David W. Oxtoby

David W. Oxtoby is President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is President Emeritus of Pomona College, and he was a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Graduate School of Education prior to becoming President of the American Academy. As the ninth president of Pomona College, Oxtoby has been recognized as a leader in American higher education. Previously he served as Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences and the William Rainey Harper Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago.

Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis

In these times of social and epidemiological crisis, it is crucial to consider how our historical antecedents faced emergency. In this lecture, Edgar Garcia examines how the indigenous K’iche’ Maya story of creation the Popol Vuh—written in a time of colonial devastation—helps its readers to rethink the current crisis and the repercussions of the colonialism crisis.

Diane P. Wood

Diane P. Wood has served as a judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit since 1995. Her research interests include antitrust—both international and general—federal civil procedure, and international trade and business. Additionally, Wood is Senior Lecturer in the Law School at the University of Chicago.

Eric Slauter

Eric Slauter has published The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the Constitution (University of Chicago Press, 2009), examining the relation of culture to politics in revolutionary America. A historian of American thought and culture, his scholarship focuses chiefly on the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War.

William Howell

William Howell has written widely on separation of powers issues, with a particular focus on the American Presidency. The author, most recently, of Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2020), William is the Sydney Stein Professor of American Politics at the Harris School of Public Policy, the Chair of the Department of Political Science, the Director of the Center for Effective Government, and co-host of Not Another Politics Podcast.

Tom Ginsburg

Tom Ginsburg advises governments and international organizations on constitutions, legal reform, and democracy. His latest book is How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (2018, with co-author Aziz Huq). Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Professor of International Law at the University of Chicago, where he also holds an appointment in the Political Science Department.

Susan Stokes

Susan Stokes's research focuses on the emergence, quality, and erosion of democracy, especially in the developing world. Currently, she is writing a book about the referendum as mechanisms of direct democracy—its promises and its limitations. Stokes is the Blake Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science and Faculty Director of the Chicago Center on Democracy at the University of Chicago.