Energy (and Other) Events Monthly - September 2026

These kinds of events below are happening all over the world every day and most of them, now, are webcast and archived, sometimes even with accurate transcripts. Would be good to have a place that helped people access them. This is a more global version of the local listings I did for about a decade until September 2020 and earlier for a few years in the 1990s (what I did and why I did it at http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2013/11/what-i-do-and-why-i-do-it.html

A more comprehensive global listing service could be developed if there were enough people interested in doing it, if it hasn’t already been done.

If anyone knows of such a global listing of open energy, climate, and other events is available, please put me in contact.

Thanks for reading,
Solar IS Civil Defense,
George Mokray
gmoke@world.std.com

http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com - notes on lectures and books
http://solarray.blogspot.com - renewable energy and efficiency
http://zeronetenrg.blogspot.com - zero net energy links list
http://cityag.blogspot.com - city agriculture links list

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Index
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What is water worth? Moving beyond the price tag
Wednesday, August 26
12pm to 2pm EDT [5:00pm to 7:00pm BST]
The Diamond - Lecture Theatre 2, The University of Sheffield, 32 Leavygreave Road, Sheffield, S3 7RD UK
And online
RSVP at https://sheffield.ac.uk/grantham-centre/events/what-water-worth-moving-beyond-price-tag

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COPx Webinar: Wildfires at Breaking Point: Protecting Forests & Communities
Wednesday, August 26
1 PM - 2:15 PM EDT
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/copx-webinar-wildfires-at-breaking-point-protecting-forests-communities-tickets-1997482167935?aff=oddtdtcreator

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Data Centers and AI in En-ROADS: Modeling the Energy Demand of a Growing Industry
Thursday, August 27
12:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Online
RSVP at https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pi5rgqh6S-mJjulMN2JEmw#/registration

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No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism
Thursday, August 27
6:30pm - 7:30pm
WBUR CitySpace, 890 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215
RSVP at https://brooklinebooksmith.com/event/2026-08-27/wbur-cityspace-jared-huffman
Cost: $10 -$30

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4th MIT Global Humanities Forum on “Recovering Agency through Visual Arts amid Political Uncertainty and Exile” on August 28 (online)
Friday, August 28
10:00am to 11:30am EDT
Online
RSVP at https://mit.zoom.us/meeting/register/ZGi90f2sSRSMaASrz6txTA#/registration

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A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving: Lessons on Love, Care, and Survival
Monday, August 31
7:00pm
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-3820
RSVP at https://www.harvard.com/event/virginia-eubanks

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Diving Deep on the Blue Economy
Tuesday, September 1
5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Mintz, One Financial Center, Boston, MA 02111
RSVP at https://luma.com/3xh30y0m

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APSA Pre-Conference Event: The Politics of AI
Wednesday, September 2
8:30 AM - 5:30 PM
Northeastern, 103 Churchill Hall
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScQ4i8OGVlbcBM4ASlSEl4Xfi0yWFSLJt-o_Mu1pS94nXmGlQ/viewform

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Monitoring the World's Grasslands and Livestock: A Complete View of Overlooked Landscapes
Wednesday, September 2
9:00-10:00 am ET
Online
RSVP at https://landcarbonlab.org/events/grasslands-a-complete-view-of-overlooked-land/#registration-form

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Union of Concerned Scientists Profiles in Courage: Science Rising National Call
Wednesday, September 2
3:00-4:00 p.m. ET
Online
RSVP at https://secure.ucs.org/a/2026-9-2-science-rising-national-call-a

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Fire in the Heart of the City: The Triangle Shirtwaist Tragedy and the Origins of Modern Charity
Wednesday, September 2
7:00pm
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-3820
RSVP at https://www.harvard.com/event/david-conrad-perez

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The Carbon Wave
Friday, September 4
7:00pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Coolidge Corner, Brookline, MA 02446-2908
RSVP at https://brooklinebooksmith.com/event/2026-09-04/leah-c-stokes-gina-mccarthy-varshini-prakash-and-david-abel-carbon-wave

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Spotlight on Skills: How to build the green workforce for 2030
Tuesday, September 8
06:00 - 07:00 EDT
Online
RSVP at https://webinars.businessgreen.com/spotlight-on-skills-how-to-build-the-green-workforce-for-2030/register

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What’s Driving Deforestation? Exploring Alert Drivers Data on Global Nature Watch
Tuesday, September 8
10:00 - 11:00am EDT
Online
RSVP at https://hub.wri.org/events/2026/9/whats-driving-deforestation-exploring-alert-drivers-data-global-nature-watch?returnTo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wri.org%2Fevents&_gl=1*923r6*_gcl_au*MTI1NTgxMTIzOS4xNzg1MDA5NTIxLi0uLS4xNzg1MDA5NTI2LjkwMzc2MTcyLjE3ODc2MjQ0OTYuMTc4NzYyNDUyMg..

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When the Weather Becomes a Health Emergency: Climate Change and the Future
Tuesday, September 8
6 PM - 7 PM
Paul S. Russell, MD Museum of Medical History and Innovation at Massachusetts General Hospital, 2 North Grove Street, Boston, MA 02114
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/when-the-weather-becomes-a-health-emergency-climate-change-and-the-future-tickets-1997973277858

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25 Years Later: The Lessons and Legacy of September 11, 2001
Tuesday, September 8
6 – 7 p.m.
JFK Jr. Forum, Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
And live-streamed
RSVP at https://iop.harvard.edu/events/25-years-later-lessons-and-legacy-september-11-2001

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Courage Can Save Us: Ten Extraordinary Americans and the Fight for Our Future
Tuesday, September 8
6 - 7pm A
JFKennedy Library, Columbia Point, Boston, MA 02125
And online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/courage-can-save-us-ten-extraordinary-americans-the-fight-for-our-future-tickets-1997699558155?aff=JFKWebpage

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Above the Fray? Rethinking the Supreme Court Independence
Tuesday, September 8
7:00 pm (Doors open at 6:30pm)
First Parish Church, Harvard Square, 1 Church Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
RSVP at https://cambridgeforum.org/above-the-fray-rethinking-the-supreme-court-independence/

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What’s at Stake, What’s Possible: A Massachusetts Science Town Hall
Tuesday, September 8
7:00 p.m. ET (doors open at 6:00 p.m.)
Robbins Memorial Town Hall, 730 Massachusetts Ave., Arlington, MA 02476
RSVP at https://secure.ucs.org/a/2026-9-8-ma-townhall-a
This event is free and open to the public. Advance registration is required.

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The Geometry of Machine Learning
Wednesday, September 9 - Friday, September 11
Harvard CMSA, Room G10, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge
And online
RSVP at https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_iebTX_UKT5Os5UrtzG3fBQ#/registration
More information at https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/event/gml_2026/

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Science, policy, action: working together to reduce Super El Niño risks
Wednesday, September 9
8am to 10:30am EDT [14:00 CEST ending at 16:30 CEST]
Stockholm Environment Institute, Textilgatan 43, 120 30 Stockholm, Sweden
And online
RSVP at https://www.sei.org/events/reduce-super-el-nino-risks/

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Tipping points webinar series: Climate modeling and tipping points
Caroline Zimm,Senior Research Scholar (TISS, EQU)
Wednesday, September 9
10am - 11:30am EDT [16:00-17:30 CEST]
Online
RSVP at https://iiasa.ac.at/events/sep-2026/tipping-points-webinar-series-climate-modeling-and-tipping-points

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MEMA: Building Hazard Preparedness into Climate Resiliency – Part Five of the Webinar Series on Climate Resiliency in Massachusetts
Wednesday, September 9
11:45 am - 1:00 pm EST
Online
RSVP at https://ebcne.org/event/massachusetts-emergency-management-agency-part-four-of-the-webinar-series-on-climate-resiliency-in-massachusetts/
Cost: $30 -$125

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When the Plant Closes: Modernizing Unemployment Insurance for Climate and Industrial Shocks
Wednesday, September 9
12:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Online
RSVP at https://upenn.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_TgSTWInDSvGTJvpaMCq5EQ#/registrations

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Strange New Worlds: The Science of Star Trek
Astrobiology
Wednesday, September 9
6:30pm EDT
Carnegie Science Earth & Planets LaboratoryGreenewalt Auditorium, 5241 Broad Branch Road NW, Washington, D.C. 20015
And online
RSVP at https://carnegiescience.edu/strange-new-worlds-science-star-trek

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Making the Invisible Visible: Microplastics off the Massachusetts Coast
Wednesday, September 9
5:30 PM - 8:30 PM
SwissnexBoston420 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02138
RSVP at https://luma.com/epj9a6c7

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Francis Fukuyama: In the Realm of the Last Man
Wednesday, September 9
6:00pm
Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02138
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/francis-fukuyama-at-the-cambridge-public-library-tickets-1992856031035

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Three Mile Island: Legacy & Resistance to Reopening
Wednesday, September 9
7:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Online
RSVP at https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-LGJU4j6TD2Hgf0rpgAr1A#/registration

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Campus as Commons: Agroforestry and Shared Stewardship at Tufts
Thursday, September 10
12 – 1PM
Tufts, Curtis Hall Multipurpose Room, 474 Boston Avenue, Medford, MA 2155
And online
RSVP at https://tufts.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_trzRawg4RbKfQBvJ5ylTDw#/registration

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25 Years Later: Remembering September 11th and Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s Legacy of Leadership
Thursday, September 10
12:30pm
Edward M Kennedy Institute, 210 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125
RSVP at https://emkinstitute.org/events/september-10-25-years-later-remembering-september-11th-and-senator-edward-m-kennedys-legacy-of-leadership/

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The 9/11 terrorist attacks at 25: Assessing the legacy, addressing the future
Friday, September 11
1:00 PM - 4:00 PM EDT
The Brookings Institution, Falk Auditorium, 1775 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC
And online
RSVP at https://www.brookings.edu/events/the-9-11-terrorist-attacks-at-25-assessing-the-legacy-addressing-the-future/

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Seasons of Fury: Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America
Friday, September 11
7:00pm
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-3820
RSVP at https://www.harvard.com/event/rozina-ali

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Co-Designing Community-Centered AI for Environmental Science
September 14
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Columbia, Fayerweather Hall, 1180 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY 10027 Room 513
And online
RSVP at https://www.climate.columbia.edu/events/co-designing-community-centered-ai-environmental-science

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Crisis leadership 25 years after 9/11
Monday, September 14
1 – 2 p.m.
The Studio, 10th Floor, Kresge Building, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston
And online
RSVP at https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_ewISc7vDPDOeduu

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“Living Civics” Film Screening & Conversation
Monday, September 14
6 PM - 8 PM
Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, 210 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/living-civics-film-screening-conversation-tickets-1996669531317

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Supremacy: How Rule by the Court Replaced Government by the People
Monday, September 14
7:00pm
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-3820

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Changing the Conversation: Intro to Effective Climate Change Communication
Tuesday, September 15
1 PM - 2 PM EDT
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/changing-the-conversation-intro-to-effective-climate-change-communication-registration-1994625694145

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Building better 3D cell models: Advances in organoid development, automation, and biomedical research
Wednesday, September 16
12:00 PM ET
Online
RSVP at https://view6.workcast.net/register?cpak=8581973176426375&referrer=SciencePage&utm_campaign=webinars2026

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The Endangerment Finding: What's at Stake in the Courts and How to Take Action
Wednesday, September 16
12:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Online
RSVP at https://ceres-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/3017870698026/WN_pRIipGuwQTCnjGZO_Vyt2w#/registration

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Wildfire smoke: The health and environmental impacts
Wednesday, September 16
1 – 1:45 p.m.
The Studio, 10th Floor, Kresge Building, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston
And online
RSVP at https://hsph.harvard.edu/events/wildfire-smoke-the-health-and-environmental-impacts/

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Older Homelessness: An Emerging Challenge for Cities
Wednesday, September 16
4:00 PM - 5:15 PM ET
Harvard Kennedy School, Bloomberg Center for Cities, Third Floor, Taubman Building, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
And online
RSVP at https://hksexeced.tfaforms.net/f/registration?e=a4oPp000001hBxJIAU

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Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor with Aziz Rana: End Times Fascism
Wednesday, September 16
Starts at 6:15 PM
Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard Street, Brookline, MA 02446
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/naomi-klein-astra-taylor-with-aziz-rana-end-times-fascism-tickets-1993542804192
Cost: $7.63

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From Survival to Advocacy: A Conversation with Nadia Murad and Ambassador Samantha Power
Wednesday, September 16
7 – 8 p.m.
JFK Jr. Forum, Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
And livestreamed
RSVP at https://www.youtube.com/@HarvardIOP/streams

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Mark Peterson: The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution
Wednesday, September 16
7 PM - 8:30 PM
BC, Gasson Hall, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Newton, MA 02467
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mark-peterson-the-making-and-breaking-of-the-american-constitution-tickets-1989263826655

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Lessons in Environmental Diplomacy
Thursday, September 17
12 – 1PM
Tufts, Curtis Hall Multipurpose Room, 474 Boston Avenue, Medford, MA 02155
And online
RSVP at https://tufts.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_md3V29KPRiqF4tUNrE15XQ#/registration

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The Cost of Dependence: Fossil Fuels, National Security, and the Path to Energy Resilience
Thursday, September 17
1:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Online
RSVP at https://ceres-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/6017870699580/WN_caN3lpkpQ7-2ErBL48BqDQ#/registration

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Clough Colloquium: Leadership for a More Perfect Union and What the Constitution Means to Us
Thursday, September 17
4pm
BC, Robsham Theater Arts Center, 50 St. Thomas More Road, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdXdgQhVpNM7ckWUtuiSW4GVfgLQ2FiGBtfhG7AdF_2U3KV8g/viewform

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NEQ Symposium on Environmental Histories of New England, 1600-2026
Friday, September 18
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM EDT
Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02215
RSVP at https://www.masshist.org/events/neq-symposium-environmental-histories

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Climate & Fossil Fuels
Friday, September 18
12 PM - 3 PM EDT
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/climate-fossil-fuels-tickets-1989266334155

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Reawakening Humanity’s Sacred Connection with Earth
Sunday, September 20
8 AM - 5:30 PM EDT
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-reawakening-humanitys-sacred-connection-with-earth-tickets-1996170289070

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Against Tech Oligarchy: Worker Resistance in the World’s Most Powerful Industry
Monday, September 21
7:00pm
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-3820

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Brave Leadership for Climate Solutions
Tuesday, September 22
10 AM - 11:30 AM EDT
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/brave-leadership-for-climate-solutions-tickets-1998400713329

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Charging Ahead: The Economic Opportunity of America’s Battery Belt
Wednesday, September 23
10:00 am – 11:00 am (EST)
GH on the Park, 54 W 40th St, New York, NY
And online
RSVP at https://www.c2es.org/event/charging-ahead-the-economic-opportunity-of-americas-battery-belt/

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The New Blueprint: Climate Resiliency by Design
Wednesday, September 23
10 AM - 11:30 AM EDT
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-new-blueprint-climate-resiliency-by-design-virtual-only-tickets-1998489615237

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Extreme Heat and Beyond: Power Infrastructure for a More Demanding Future
Wednesday, September 23
11:30 am – 1:00 pm (EST)
GH on the Park, 54 W 40th Street, 10th Floor, New York, NY
And online
RSVP at https://www.c2es.org/event/extreme-heat-and-beyond/

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Energy Transitions as Population Health Interventions
Wednesday, September 23
Noon - 1:05 p.m.
UC Berkeley, 310 Social Sciences Building, Berkeley, CA
And online
RSVP at https://events.berkeley.edu/events/event/326398-demography-brown-bag-seminar-with-misbath-daouda-ener

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American Made, Deployed Everywhere: How big is the market for industrial decarbonization technologies?
Wednesday, September 23
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm (EST)
GH on the Park, 54 W 40th St, New York, 10th Floor
And online
RSVP at https://www.c2es.org/event/american-made-deployed-everywhere/

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From Lawn to Garden: Artistic Forms of Vegetal Resistance
Thursday, September 24
12 – 1PM
Tufts, Curtis Hall Multipurpose Room, 474 Boston Avenue, Medford, MA 02155
And online
RSVP at https://tufts.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_78EXisrHTMOXfRG9dolDpQ#/registration

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Tech & Regulation Seminar: Intelligence by the Sip: AI's Coming Token Divide
Thursday, September 24
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM ET
Harvard, Wexner 434AB, 19 Eliot Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
And online
RSVP at https://hksexeced.tfaforms.net/f/registration?e=a4oPp000001hlcbIAA

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Why welfare states depend on economic growth - and how that could change
Thursday, September 24
12pm to 2pm EDT [5:00pm to 7:00pm BST]
Reserve your place
The Diamond - Lecture Theatre 3
And online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/why-welfare-states-depend-on-economic-growth-and-how-that-could-change-tickets-1990099552333

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BOST-Ig: An Ig Nobel Celebration
Thursday, September 24
5:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Swissnex, 420 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
RSVP at https://luma.com/2h833sy1

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The Walden Experiments: The Science of Henry David Thoreau
Friday, September 25
Starts at 6 PM
Harvard, Science Center, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/robert-m-thorson-at-the-harvard-science-center-tickets-1996013701713

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22nd Annual Ikeda Forum: A New Vision of Global Citizenship: Reimagining Education in An Age of Division
Friday, September 25
7:00 PM (ET)
The Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue, 396 Harvard Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/22nd-annual-ikeda-forum-tickets-1997019483032

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The 2026 Annual Environment & Spirituality Summit
Monday, September 28 - Tuesday, September 29
Online
https://aes-summit.org/

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From Global Climate Vulnerability Trends to Policy Choices
Monday, September 28
12:00pm to 1:00pm EDT
MIT, Building E40-496, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge, MA 02142
And online
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeoQPscJUOuZkwwpEC5K2D66NWweORiYkFys-0UVoAbYvGSog/viewform

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Policy Analysis at Scale: An Instrument to Evaluate Governance Proposals
Monday, September 28
12 – 1 p.m.
Harvard, Wexner 434AB (HKS Campus), 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
And online
RSVP at https://www.hks.harvard.edu/events/policy-analysis-scale-instrument-evaluate-governance-proposals

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Public Research Talk: A Transcendentalist Peace: American Pacifism from Lydia Maria Child to Jane Addams
Monday, September 28
12 – 1:30 p.m.
Harvard Divinity School, Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave., Cambridge, MA
RSVP at https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bpW6b8Lb0Ao79C6
And online
RSVP at https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_j0AY4o8xTXqWA0P_wHO_UQ#/registration

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Local Food Systems within Just Transition Micro-Clusters with Thomas Froehlich
Monday, September 28
12:00pm to 1:30pm EDT
Location will be emailed upon registration
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSecKyxMYGzh42CqfuHEYDVASOyZciiG6l4DD7gzZQXhMQgMBg/viewform

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Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism”
Monday, September 28
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Princeton, 300 Wallace Hall, Princeton, NJ
And online
RSVP at https://environment.princeton.edu/event/extraction-the-frontiers-of-green-capitalism/

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Kashef Chowdhury, “Meditations in Entropy”
Monday, September 28
6:30 PM - 8 PM
Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 48 Quincy Street, Piper Auditorium Cambridge, MA 02138
And livestreamed at https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/event/meditations-in-entropy/
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/kashef-chowdhury-meditations-in-entropy-tickets-1998429350985
RSVP does not guarantee entry, which is filled on a first-come-first-served basis. Doors open 15 minutes before the event begins, so be sure to arrive early.

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Future Energy Landscapes (FEL): a new toolkit
Tuesday, September 29
8 AM - 9 AM EDT
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/future-energy-landscapes-fel-a-new-toolkit-tickets-1996779977665

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How Big Tech Is Fueling the Future of War
Tuesday, September 29
3pm EDT [6:00 PM PDT]
Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California, Taube Family Auditorium, 110 The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94105
And online
RSVP at https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2026-09-29/sharon-weinberger-how-big-tech-fueling-future-war
Cost: $10 - $57

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Building What's Next: Global Development When the Model Breaks
Tuesday, September 29
5:30-7:30 PM | The Foundry, , 101 Rogers St, Cambridge, MA 02142
RSVP at https://bnid.wildapricot.org/event-6662652
Cost: $20 - $25

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Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines
Tuesday, September 29
6:00pm
Harvard Science Center, Hall B, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sherry-turkle-at-the-harvard-science-center-tickets-1996244136951

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Author Talk: N.K. Jemisin on Revolutionary Ideas in Fantasy Fiction
Tuesday, September 29
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Central Library in Copley Square, 700 Boylston Street, Boston MA 02116
RSVP at https://bpl.libcal.com/event/16247689

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All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump
Wednesday, September 30
6:00pm
The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/anthony-scaramucci-at-the-brattle-theatre-tickets-1996303674028
Cost: $13.59

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The Shoreline Is Moving. Should We?
Thursday, October 1
12 – 1PM
Tufts, Curtis Hall Multipurpose Room, 474 Boston Avenue, Medford, MA 02155
And online
RSVP at https://tufts.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_t_6oXRaRRUSOomB1brtoUg#/registration

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Innovating with Amazon: Six Months of Building and What's Next
Thursday, October 1
5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Greentown Labs, 444 Somerville Avenue, Somerville, MA 02143, USA
RSVP at https://luma.com/ckb3o0je
Donations accepted

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Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census
Thursday, October 1
7:00pm
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-3820

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VthePeople: Amending the Constitution through Article V
Friday, October 2 – Saturday, October 3
Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Hall, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138
RSVP at https://secure.touchnet.net/C20832_ustores/web/store_main.jsp?STOREID=42&SINGLESTORE=true
Cost: $0 - $125

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Living Beyond Earth: Our Next Giant Leap
Monday, October 5
1 – 5:30 p.m.
Harvard, Knafel Center and Fay House, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
And online
RSVP at https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2026-living-beyond-earth-symposium

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Events
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What is water worth? Moving beyond the price tag
Wednesday, August 26
12pm to 2pm EDT [5:00pm to 7:00pm BST]
The Diamond - Lecture Theatre 2, The University of Sheffield, 32 Leavygreave Road, Sheffield, S3 7RD UK
And online
RSVP at https://sheffield.ac.uk/grantham-centre/events/what-water-worth-moving-beyond-price-tag

Join us for what promises to be an insightful discussion with Professor Julia Martin-Ortega.
How do we decide what water is worth? For much of her career, Professor Julia Martin-Ortega has explored how economics can help societies make better decisions about water and the natural environment. But over time, her work has also led her to question whether everything that matters can—or should—be expressed in monetary terms.
In this talk, Julia will trace her journey from environmental economics towards ecological economics, and from monetary valuation towards approaches that recognise the many different ways people understand and value water. Drawing on more than 20 years of research and policy engagement, she will reflect on what economics can contribute to addressing water challenges, where conventional approaches fall short, and why tackling today’s environmental crises may require us to rethink not only how we value nature, but the role of economics itself.

The event will include a drinks reception, audience Q&A, and an opportunity for informal networking and discussion following the talk.

A limited online attendance option will also be available for those unable to join us in person.

About Julia
Julia Martin-Ortega is professor of Ecological Economics and Associate Director of water@leeds, one of the largest interdisciplinary water research hubs. Her research aims to further the understanding human-nature relationships and how policy can best make use of this understanding for sustainable water and land management. She specialises in inter and transdisciplinary research approaches oriented to the delivery of societal impact. She is member of Natural England’s Science Advisory Committee and advises Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Environment & Rural Affairs and Defra’s Global Centre on Biodiversity for Climate. Her work has been adopted by the UK Climate Change Committee and informed its 7th Carbon Budget. She has influenced the UN & World Bank’s Valuing Water Initiative and has contributed to the work of the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Water and Human Rights and the UN Living in Harmony with Nature programme. Her research has influenced law (e.g. the notion of value in Scotland’s Water Resources Act), policy programmes (e.g. Northern Ireland’s £35M Soil Nutrient-Health Scheme) and environmental practice (e.g. England’s PeatPilots, Scotland’s Peatland Action Plan). Julia is the founder of the Water Woman Initiative, which rewards and empowers women in water research for their inspiring nature of their achievements.

This event is part of the 'Rethinking Prosperity on a Finite Planet' event series.

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COPx Webinar: Wildfires at Breaking Point: Protecting Forests & Communities
Wednesday, August 26
1 PM - 2:15 PM EDT
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/copx-webinar-wildfires-at-breaking-point-protecting-forests-communities-tickets-1997482167935?aff=oddtdtcreator

Explore practical solutions to rising wildfire risk, from forest resilience and climate action to finance and carbon markets.

Join us for a timely discussion on the growing wildfire crisis and the practical solutions that can protect forests, communities, and the climate benefits they provide.
Wildfires are no longer isolated seasonal emergencies. Their severity and consequences are increasingly shaped by climate change, forest management, economic incentives, and decades of underinvestment in resilience. At the same time, forests play a vital role in climate strategies, raising urgent questions about permanence, carbon-credit integrity, and how we prepare for unavoidable risks.

This conversation will examine what is driving today’s wildfire threat, why prevention and resilience make economic as well as environmental sense, and how better forest stewardship, environmental finance, and innovative carbon-accounting approaches can help deliver lasting results.

Speakers
Hunter Lovins, Co-founder, COPx | President, Natural Capitalism Solutions
Hunter will bring a systems-level perspective to the conversation, examining how climate change and economic models that undervalue nature increase wildfire risk, and how businesses, governments, and communities can invest in regenerative, practical solutions.
George Kelly, CEO, Earth Recovery Partners
George will discuss how environmental markets, nature-based solutions, and innovative financing can mobilize the capital needed to restore forests, strengthen watersheds, and scale wildfire resilience.
Will Clayton, CEO, Sky Harvest
Will will share Sky Harvest’s approach to protecting forest-carbon integrity from wildfire risk, including lessons from Project Nimbus and a carbon-accounting model designed to proactively address potential reversals.
Moderator
Paul Rowland, COO, Environment Next

We’ll Cover
Why wildfire risk is growing, and why its effects extend far beyond burned acreage
The connections between wildfires, climate change, forest health, communities, and the economy
The business and policy case for investing in prevention and resilience
How environmental finance and market-based solutions can support forest and watershed restoration
New approaches to wildfire risk, permanence, and credibility in forest-carbon markets
Practical actions for landowners, businesses, investors, communities, and policymakers
We’ll leave time for audience Q&A.

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Data Centers and AI in En-ROADS: Modeling the Energy Demand of a Growing Industry
Thursday, August 27
12:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Online
RSVP at https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pi5rgqh6S-mJjulMN2JEmw#/registration

With the world increasingly relying on artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing, energy and climate dynamics are changing fast. In this webinar, we'll introduce the latest update to the En-ROADS Climate Solutions Simulator, which lets you explore the growing energy demand over time of an emerging data center and AI industry, the drivers of that growth, and how it impacts global emissions and temperature. Climate Interactive's Technical Project Manager Sam Wellington and MIT Professor John Sterman will guide you through the simulator's new features and explain the dynamics behind a range of AI growth scenarios. You'll leave with insights you can apply to your discussions and decision-making, with a clearer sense of what's uncertain, what the critical levers are, and what's at stake.

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No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism
Thursday, August 27
6:30pm - 7:30pm
WBUR CitySpace, 890 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215
RSVP at https://brooklinebooksmith.com/event/2026-08-27/wbur-cityspace-jared-huffman
Cost: $10 -$30

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The separation of church and state has long been considered part of the foundation of American democracy. Rep. Jared Huffman of California's 2nd congressional district, argues in a newly penned book, No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism, that this bedrock principle and democracy itself is under threat by Christian nationalism. With 250th anniversary celebrations underway and President Donald Trump’s emphasis on a Christian founding narrative, No Prophets lands during a particularly prescient time for Christian nationalists trying to advance their agenda across the U.S. government.

Huffman will join environmental activist and author Bill McKibben to discuss the book. Copies will be available to purchase.

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4th MIT Global Humanities Forum on “Recovering Agency through Visual Arts amid Political Uncertainty and Exile” on August 28 (online)
Friday, August 28
10:00am to 11:30am EDT
Online
RSVP at https://mit.zoom.us/meeting/register/ZGi90f2sSRSMaASrz6txTA#/registration

Join us for the 2026 GHI 4th Forum, rescheduled to August 28! This session introduces the GHI Pillar Heritage, Memory & Identity, and its project: Relocating Agency amid Political Uncertainty and Exile
Speakers: Alicia Stevens, Bart Was Not Here (a.k.a. Kyaw Moe Khine), Nathalie Johnston, Maung Day, Sana Aiyar

The Heritage, Memory, and Identity pillar of MIT’s Global Humanities investigates how the legacies of the past continue to structure contemporary societies and future imaginaries. It views heritage not as a static collection of monuments, but as a dynamic process of meaning construction through which communities negotiate belonging, power, and identity. By engaging with the political, ethical, and creative dimensions of memory, the pillar seeks to illuminate how cultural legacies can both reproduce inequities and inspire new forms of resilience and repair. Our ongoing project demonstrates this approach. Relocating Agency amid Political Uncertainty and Exile brings Burmese visual artists that are dealing with exile and uncertainty into dialogue with MIT and international audiences through workshops, exhibitions, and publications that explore art as a form of soft power and political survival amid displacement and authoritarian repression. By reconnecting forgotten exchanges across regions and epochs, this initiative models how critical heritage studies can bridge past injustice with the ethical imagination of more equitable futures.

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A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving: Lessons on Love, Care, and Survival
Monday, August 31
7:00pm
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-3820
RSVP at https://www.harvard.com/event/virginia-eubanks

Harvard Book Store welcomes Virginia Eubanks—investigative journalist, author of Automating Inequality, and an associate professor of political science at the University at Albany, State University of New York—for a discussion of her new memoir, A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving: Lessons on Love, Care, and Survival.

About A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving
A spirited, wise, often hilarious, profoundly moving story of one woman's efforts to survive caregiving, trauma, love, and the systems seemingly set up to fail us.
One night, Virginia Eubanks received the kind of news we all fear. Her beloved partner had been brutally beaten just steps from their house. In the weeks, then months and years that followed, they faced a cascade of setbacks: police disinterest, suspended health insurance, inadequate medical care, lost income, lost friends, endless paperwork, and a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Then, a second case. Eubanks had developed what is known as “collateral” PTSD, common among caregivers but rarely discussed.

A reporter and an activist, Eubanks turned to reliable sources to figure out how to heal: scientists, therapists, trauma theorists, social movements. But it wasn’t until she happened on an old lifesaving manual that she found advice that actually helped. Inspired by its lessons, she took a series of classes: kayak self-rescue, winter survival, map and compass, bushwhacking, first aid, lifeguarding. In a memoir as disarmingly funny as it is quietly wise, Eubanks draws lessons from these experiences, her research, and interviews with everyone from neuroscientists to forest rangers. The result is a moving, hopeful, darkly funny story of two people caught in their own kind of wilderness, trying not just to survive but to truly care for each other. Built from cataclysmic loss and tenacious love, A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving challenges readers to reconsider the networks of care that sustain our lives, reminding us that no one survives the wilderness alone.

Bio
Virginia Eubanks is an investigative journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, The Guardian, Nature, and Scientific American. She is the author of Automating Inequality: How HighTech Tools Profile, Police, Punish the Poor, and A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving. She is an associate professor of political science at the University at Albany, State University of New York. When not sleeping in her truck in the Adirondacks, she lives in Troy, New York. Photo Credit: William Gill

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Diving Deep on the Blue Economy
Tuesday, September 1
5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Mintz, One Financial Center, Boston, MA 02111
RSVP at https://luma.com/3xh30y0m

​In New England, it’s easy to take the ocean for granted – especially in the summer, when we’re all ready to cool off. But the ocean is a hotbed for commerce and climate change. Global supply chains are dependent on the weather patterns that affect shipping lanes; ports are increasingly under strain with rising sea level rise and coastal erosion; and communities rely on the resources – both for energy and food – that this carbon sink provides.
​Climate Salon is teaming up with Fidelity Private Shares, Mintz and Massport for an event that will go deep on solutions to answer -- How do we strengthen the commercialization pipeline for New England’s blue economy innovations?

​Join us to discuss:
Port Infrastructure & Supply Chain
Data & AI
Coastal Resiliency
Fisheries

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APSA Pre-Conference Event: The Politics of AI
Wednesday, September 2
8:30 AM - 5:30 PM
Northeastern, 103 Churchill Hall
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScQ4i8OGVlbcBM4ASlSEl4Xfi0yWFSLJt-o_Mu1pS94nXmGlQ/viewform

The event will feature several panels on the politics of AI, covering topics such as deepfakes and the information environment, democratic resilience, and public opinion in the age of artificial intelligence. Food and refreshments will be provided.

Cost:
Free for APSA attendees, faculty, students, and researchers in AI and politics

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Monitoring the World's Grasslands and Livestock: A Complete View of Overlooked Landscapes
Wednesday, September 2
9:00-10:00 am ET
Online
RSVP at https://landcarbonlab.org/events/grasslands-a-complete-view-of-overlooked-land/#registration-form

Grasslands and rangelands blanket much of the planet, sustaining more than a billion people and storing vast amounts of carbon — yet they remain among the hardest ecosystems on Earth to monitor consistently. That is starting to change.

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Union of Concerned Scientists Profiles in Courage: Science Rising National Call
Wednesday, September 2
3:00-4:00 p.m. ET
Online
RSVP at https://secure.ucs.org/a/2026-9-2-science-rising-national-call-a

What does it mean to act courageously in defense of science and democracy under authoritarianism? The Trump administration has brought so many attacks on scientific research, public health, the environment, our communities, and our rights—but that has also led to countless examples of individuals and groups of people speaking out, showing up, and taking action to defend our values. These individuals and their actions deserve to be celebrated and shared widely, to inspire others to find ways they can take their own courageous actions.

Our next Science Rising National Call will feature Profiles in Courage from scientists and advocates who have raised their voices and taken action in defense of science and democracy.
Featuring our courageous panelists:
Dr. Jenna Norton: public health scientist, one of the lead organizers of the Bethesda Declaration.
Elizabeth Villano: former National Park Service staff, volunteer with Resistance Rangers
Dr. Gregg Gonsalves: professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health and a member of Defend Public Health
Dr. Steven Kahn: Professor of Medicine, University of Washington; Editor, Diabetes Care
UCS President and CEO Dr. Gretchen Goldman will moderate the discussion.

Through Science Rising, we're celebrating and uplifting the stories of what pushing back against anti-science and authoritarian actions can look like in different institutions, at different levels, and in different ways. We ALL have a role to play in protecting science and democracy, and we're excited for our panelists to share examples that will inspire and motivate others to take action.

This webinar will be recorded and a recording will be sent to everyone who registers.

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Fire in the Heart of the City: The Triangle Shirtwaist Tragedy and the Origins of Modern Charity
Wednesday, September 2
7:00pm
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-3820
RSVP at https://www.harvard.com/event/david-conrad-perez

Harvard Book Store welcomes David Conrad-Pérez—historian, former journalist, and research director for the Center for Media & Social Impact at American University—for a discussion of his new book, Fire in the Heart of the City: The Triangle Shirtwaist Tragedy and the Origins of Modern Charity.

About Fire in the Heart of the City
How New York's elite claimed authority over social welfare in the wake of the Triangle Shirtwaist Tragedy.
In American history, few tragedies have been as consequential—and as enduringly misunderstood—as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911. Long remembered as a turning point in the struggle for labor protections, Fire in the Heart of the City shows how the fire also helped transform another cornerstone of modern American life: the rise of modern charity.

Set in early twentieth-century New York, the book tells the extraordinary story of what happened when a catastrophic fire in Greenwich Village threw Adolph Ochs, the ambitious new publisher of the New York Times, and Rose Schneiderman, a defiant young labor organizer, into a momentous struggle over who should organize the city’s response: a rising charity sector led by wealthy financiers and civic elites, or the reform-minded unions and activists of Lower Manhattan.

Drawing on newly released archival documents, interviews with the descendants of Times publisher Adolph Ochs and New York labor organizers, previously confidential reports, and long-overlooked private diaries and correspondence, historian and former journalist David Conrad-Pérez offers a striking new account of the disaster and its aftermath. He shows how a handful of charities on the brink of irrelevance were suddenly recast as New York’s best answer to the social and economic conditions the fire laid bare—a watershed moment in the rise of modern charity and elite authority over social welfare in the United States.

In the months after the fire, the Times and its philanthropic allies joined forces to popularize the idea that social crises should be managed not by immigrant reformers, labor advocates, or neighborhood coalitions, but by a select class of elite and supposedly “scientific” charitable institutions. In doing so, they elevated a new language of expertise around poverty and public welfare that would leave a lasting mark on American civic life.

A deeply researched and absorbing work of narrative history, Fire in the Heart of the City offers a major reinterpretation of one of the most important urban disasters in American history, revealing how a single catastrophe helped reshape not only the politics of labor, but also the moral and institutional foundations of modern American charity.

Bio
David Conrad-Pérez is a historian and former journalist whose work examines the forces that shape the media, philanthropy, and public life. He serves as research director for the Center for Media & Social Impact at American University. A former producer for On the Media and Public Radio International’s The World, he has also written for the New York Times, Reuters, and Columbia Journalism Review. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication.

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The Carbon Wave
Friday, September 4
7:00pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Coolidge Corner, Brookline, MA 02446-2908
RSVP at https://brooklinebooksmith.com/event/2026-09-04/leah-c-stokes-gina-mccarthy-varshini-prakash-and-david-abel-carbon-wave

Join us at Brookline Booksmith to celebrate the release of The Carbon Wave with author Leah C. Stokes, in a panel conversation with Gina McCarthy, Varshini Prakash, and moderator David Abel.

The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet
The true, inspiring story of the new parents who spearheaded an unlikely climate victory.

From the rising climate advocate named to the Time100 Next list, for political junkies and anyone who cares about the environment.

They were perhaps an unlikely trio: the professor Leah Stokes, the policy wonk Sonia Aggarwal in the White House, and the DC insider Adrian Deveny in the Senate, but together, they crafted the boldest climate legislation of our time. In The Carbon Wave, Stokes chronicles the turbulent path of their climate bill as it veered between breakthrough and collapse—from the hopeful beginnings of the Green New Deal in 2018, to the bill’s near-certain defeat by Senator Joe Manchin in the winter of 2021, to the surprise passage of the landmark legislation in August 2022. During this critical time, the author was pregnant or in the NICU with her premature twins, and Aggarwal and Deveny were new parents too.

Interlacing personal narratives with stories from Congress, the White House, and outside activists, Stokes shows how dogged perseverance and collective action can still bend the course of history. The book concludes with an update from the second Trump administration, explaining the parts of the bill that were—and were not—rolled back, and why we should remain hopeful that progress is still being made.

Everyone has been told to shrink their carbon footprint and lighten their load on our planet by changing their behavior. But what if instead of making ourselves smaller, we joined with others to maximize our impact? That’s the carbon wave. And this book shows us how to make it.

Leah C. Stokes is Anton Vonk Associate Professor of Environmental Politics at UC Santa Barbara. As a leading climate advocate, she has championed climate policy in the United States at all levels of government and was selected for Time Magazine’s Time100 Next list and Business Insider’s top 30 global climate leaders. A recipient of a Harvard University Radcliffe Fellowship, she is the author of the award-winning Short Circuiting Policy, which was listed as one of the top 5 climate books in 2020 by The New York Times.

Gina McCarthy: The first White House National Climate Advisor and former U.S. EPA Administrator, Gina McCarthy is one of the nation’s most respected voices on climate change, the environment, and public health. As head of the Climate Policy Office under President Biden, McCarthy’s leadership led to the most aggressive action on climate in US history, creating new jobs and unprecedented clean energy innovation and investments across the country.

Varshini Prakash is the former Executive Director and co-founder of Sunrise, a movement of young people working to stop climate change. Prakash's work has been featured in the New Yorker, Democracy Now, TeenVogue, BBC, Washington Post and more. She was named to the Grist Top 50 Fixers for “people cooking up the boldest, most ambitious solutions to humanity’s biggest challenges.” Varshini currently lives in Boston, MA.
David Abel: An award-winning reporter, documentary filmmaker, and professor of journalism, David Abel has covered war in the Balkans, unrest in Latin America, national security issues in Washington D.C., terrorism in New York and Boston, and climate change and poverty throughout New England. A longtime reporter at The Boston Globe, Abel is also a professor of the practice in the journalism department at Boston University.

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Spotlight on Skills: How to build the green workforce for 2030
Tuesday, September 8
06:00 - 07:00 EDT
Online
RSVP at https://webinars.businessgreen.com/spotlight-on-skills-how-to-build-the-green-workforce-for-2030/register

Webinar Overview
Broadcast as part of BusinessGreen’s Workforce 2030 campaign, this interactive webinar will explore the policies, investments, and initiatives required to tackle the green skills gap and ensure the benefits from the net zero transition are widely shared. The webinar will bring together leading experts to explore the scale of current green skills shortages, the steps businesses and policymakers are currently taking to tackle skills gaps, and the measures that are likely to be required in the coming years to deliver a workforce that can enable the next phase of decarbonisation.
Topics to be covered include:
The current state of the green skills base and jobs market
Existing policies for strengthening green skills development
Those areas facing the most severe green skills shortages
Best practices for enhancing green skills development

Potential policy interventions to boost the green skills base
PRESENTERS
Stuart Stone, Intelligence editor, BusinessGreen
Matt Bloice, Head of Resourcing, Equans UK & Ireland
Katie Neck, Managing Director & Founder, Sustained Futures
Martin Baxter,Deputy CEO, the Institute of Sustainability and Environmental Professionals (ISEP)

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What’s Driving Deforestation? Exploring Alert Drivers Data on Global Nature Watch
Tuesday, September 8
10:00 - 11:00am EDT
Online
RSVP at https://hub.wri.org/events/2026/9/whats-driving-deforestation-exploring-alert-drivers-data-global-nature-watch?returnTo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wri.org%2Fevents&_gl=1*923r6*_gcl_au*MTI1NTgxMTIzOS4xNzg1MDA5NTIxLi0uLS4xNzg1MDA5NTI2LjkwMzc2MTcyLjE3ODc2MjQ0OTYuMTc4NzYyNDUyMg..

Join the Global Nature Watch team and researchers from Wageningen University & Research (WUR) for a closer look at the data identifying what’s driving forest disturbance alerts across the tropics.

In this webinar, we will showcase the drivers of disturbance alerts data, a high-resolution data set available on Global Nature Watch that uses machine learning and Sentinel satellite imagery to identify the likely direct drivers behind the near-real-time disturbance alerts across the Amazon, Congo Basin and Southeast Asia. We’ll share the latest data and insights from the WUR research team, followed by a demonstration of how to explore alert drivers on Global Nature Watch.

We’ll also discuss how the data can be used in practice alongside other data sets and tools to support monitoring and more informed follow-up on forest disturbances. The session will include time for questions and discussion, and we will have simultaneous interpretation to French and Spanish. This webinar will be recorded and all registrants will receive a copy of the recording.

To learn more about the data, read our blog and explore the data on Global Nature Watch: https://globalnaturewatch.org/

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When the Weather Becomes a Health Emergency: Climate Change and the Future
Tuesday, September 8
6 PM - 7 PM
Paul S. Russell, MD Museum of Medical History and Innovation at Massachusetts General Hospital, 2 North Grove Street, Boston, MA 02114
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/when-the-weather-becomes-a-health-emergency-climate-change-and-the-future-tickets-1997973277858

Presented by Jennifer Shearer, MPH, vice president of MGB Emergency Preparedness and Business Continuity
Climate change is reshaping the threats to human health, from extreme heat and worsening air quality to more frequent disruptions caused by storms, flooding, and wildfires. This presentation explores how these evolving hazards affect individuals, communities, and healthcare systems, while highlighting practical strategies to build resilience and prepare for the health challenges of a changing climate.

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25 Years Later: The Lessons and Legacy of September 11, 2001
Tuesday, September 8
6 – 7 p.m.
JFK Jr. Forum, Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
And live-streamed
RSVP at https://iop.harvard.edu/events/25-years-later-lessons-and-legacy-september-11-2001

SPEAKER(S) Joseph Pfeiffer, Harvard Kennedy School Senior Fellow; First NYFD Chief to Respond to WTC on 9/11; Author of "Ordinary Heroes: A Memoir of 9/11"
Admiral Mike Mullen. Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (2007-2011)
Nancy Gibbs, Director, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
Meghan O'Sullivan (Moderator), Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
A panel of experts reflect on the legacy of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Join moderator Meghan O’Sullivan in conversation with Joe Pfeiffer, the first Chief of the New York Fire Department to respond to the World Trade Center on 9/11; former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen; and Nancy Gibbs, whose Time Magazine piece "If You Want to Humble an Empire" won the National Magazine Award.

Please register with a valid Harvard email address to attend in-person. All JFK Jr. Forums are publicly livestreamed on our YouTube channel.

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Courage Can Save Us: Ten Extraordinary Americans and the Fight for Our Future
Tuesday, September 8
6 - 7pm A
JFKennedy Library, Columbia Point, Boston, MA 02125
And online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/courage-can-save-us-ten-extraordinary-americans-the-fight-for-our-future-tickets-1997699558155?aff=JFKWebpage

Courage Can Save US: Ten Extraordinary Americans and the Fight for Our Future profiles a bipartisan group of post-9/11 elected officials who have worked across party lines in service of the country, offering a hopeful vision of leadership at a time of deep political division. Former Navy combat pilot Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Rye Barcott, author and Co-Founder and CEO of With Honor Action, a cross-partisan organization that supports principled military veterans running for public office, discuss carrying the values of service, integrity, and collaboration from the battlefield into public life - and how those lessons can help strengthen American democracy today.

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Above the Fray? Rethinking the Supreme Court Independence
Tuesday, September 8
7:00 pm (Doors open at 6:30pm)
First Parish Church, Harvard Square, 1 Church Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
RSVP at https://cambridgeforum.org/above-the-fray-rethinking-the-supreme-court-independence/

Was the Supreme Court ever what we thought it was?
Public trust in the Supreme Court is near a three-decade low, according to Pew Research Center: only 45% of Americans currently view the Court favorably, down 20 points from 2021, with Republicans and Democrats now divided by 44 percentage points in how they see it. Most Americans, across party lines, still say justices shouldn’t let politics shape their rulings, and most also believe, increasingly, that they do. But is that a new failure, or a return to an older reality we’ve simply forgotten? Was there ever a Court that stood apart from politics, or did we just get better, for a while, at believing in one?

Rachel A. Shelden, author of The Political Supreme Court: A Forgotten History, has spent her career studying how the Court actually operated in its first century, long before the modern ideal of judicial neutrality took hold. Peter S. Canellos, author of Revenge for the Sixties: Sam Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement, has spent his time tracing how one justice’s life story became constitutional doctrine.

Together, they’ll tackle the questions at the center of this moment: Has the Supreme Court always been political? If so, why does it feel different today? And if Americans are losing faith in the Court, what does that mean for the future of checks and balances in a democracy? Kent Greenfield, Professor of Law and the Dr. Thomas F. Carney Distinguished Scholar at Boston College Law School is moderating the conversation.
Free and open to all.

Peter Canellos
Peter S. Canellos is an award-winning journalist, author, and former executive editor of Politico. His latest book, Revenge for the Sixties: Sam Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement, explores the rise of the conservative legal movement and its impact on the Supreme Court. He is also the author of The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America’s Judicial Hero, one of Publishers Weekly‘s top nonfiction books of 2021. A former Boston Globe editorial page editor and Washington bureau chief, Canellos has earned national recognition for his writing on the Supreme Court, law, and American politics.

Rachel Shelden
Rachel A. Shelden is a historian of nineteenth-century America and Associate Professor of History at Penn State University, where she also directs the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center. Her research explores the intersections of politics, constitutionalism, law, and slavery, with a particular focus on the role of personal relationships and political networks. She is the author of Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War and the forthcoming The Political Supreme Court: A Forgotten History, which examines the political world of Supreme Court justices in the nineteenth century. A frequent public speaker on constitutional history and American political culture, Shelden received her B.A. from Stanford University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.

Kent Greenfield
Kent Greenfield is Professor of Law and the Dr. Thomas F. Carney Distinguished Scholar at Boston College Law School. A leading scholar of constitutional law, democratic institutions, and the Supreme Court, he is a frequent commentator in national and international media, including NPR, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and Fox News. He is the author of several books, including the forthcoming Secession: Why Our Country Should Split Up (and How to Do It Peacefully), and has written extensively on constitutional law, civil rights, and the challenges facing American democracy. A graduate of Brown University and the University of Chicago Law School, Greenfield clerked for Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter.

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What’s at Stake, What’s Possible: A Massachusetts Science Town Hall
Tuesday, September 8
7:00 p.m. ET (doors open at 6:00 p.m.)
Robbins Memorial Town Hall, 730 Massachusetts Ave., Arlington, MA 02476
RSVP at https://secure.ucs.org/a/2026-9-8-ma-townhall-a
This event is free and open to the public. Advance registration is required.

Over the past year, scientists in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district have been organizing through the Science Network, at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) to protect scientific integrity and funding for scientific research.

UCS invites you to join Rep. Katherine Clark (MA-5) and members of the Massachusetts science community for a public conversation about how federal decisions are affecting scientific research, public health, clean energy, technology, and the people whose work and lives depend on them.

This town hall creates an opportunity for researchers, healthcare professionals, students, innovators, and community members to share directly with Rep. Clark what they are experiencing and discuss what federal leadership can make possible.

The program will include a moderated conversation with Rep. Clark focused on:
How federal policy decisions are affecting science and research in Massachusetts;
What those impacts mean for patients, workers, students, communities, and the economy;
How constituent experiences can inform Rep. Clark's action in Congress;
Opportunities to protect scientific progress and support future innovation; and
How scientists and community members can continue to engage with Rep. Clark.

Audience members will also have an opportunity to submit questions in advance for the moderated discussion.

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The Geometry of Machine Learning
Wednesday, September 9 - Friday, September 11
Harvard CMSA, Room G10, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge
And online
RSVP at https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_iebTX_UKT5Os5UrtzG3fBQ#/registration
More information at https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/event/gml_2026/

SPEAKER(S) Nada Amin, Harvard
Randall Balestriero, Brown
Michael Brenner, Harvard and Google
Bennet Chow, UCSD
Surya Ganguli, Stanford
Boris Hanin, Princeton
Roi Holtzman, Oxford
Dimitry Krotov, IAS
Slava Krushkal, Virginia
Mike Mulligan, UCR, Logical Intelligence
Luca Pesce, Harvard
Gabriel Poesia, U Michigan
Mathew Vanherreweghe, Logical Intelligence
Sean Welleck, CMU
Mattiew Wyart, JHU

Large language models are presently, and will increasingly, be complemented by other dimensions of intelligence: formal verification and energy-based optimizers, becoming parts of larger ecosystems. Can AIs reason geometrically and can we use geometry to reveal how data is currently processed in NNs? Can AIs reveal the geometry of mathematics, as well as studying geometry as a subject within math. This conference is intended to continue the discussion of these topics.

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Science, policy, action: working together to reduce Super El Niño risks
Wednesday, September 9
8am to 10:30am EDT [14:00 CEST ending at 16:30 CEST]
Stockholm Environment Institute, Textilgatan 43, 120 30 Stockholm, Sweden
And online
RSVP at https://www.sei.org/events/reduce-super-el-nino-risks/

Public seminar with Richard Choularton, the World Food Programme (WFP) director for climate and resilience, on how governments, academia, and organizations can work together to reduce the impacts of extreme weather events like El Niño.

The world is facing a super El Niño in the summer of 2026, forecasted to be one of the strongest on record. During the 2015/2016 event, an estimated 60 million food‑insecure people were negatively affected. A super El Niño unfolding at the same time as the Houthi‑driven Red Sea crisis creates a compounded global shock that affects food security, supply chains, energy markets, and humanitarian operations simultaneously.

Extreme weather events like El Niño are shaping rainfall patterns, intensifying droughts, floods, and storms, but their effects are predictable. This predictability provides us with a window of opportunity to act before disaster strikes.
In 2015, WFP piloted its first anticipatory action program in Zimbabwe ahead of El Niño. This year, WFP stands ready in 51 countries and has already supported over 1 million people this year alone. This is the kind of innovation at scale that is urgently needed as food crises deepen.

In this seminar, Richard Choularton, WFP, together with Swedish experts in conversation with Katy Harris, SEI, will elaborate on how governments, academia, and organizations can work together to reduce the impacts of extreme weather events like El Niño.
The conversation will highlight how anticipatory action, climate‑informed social protection, and cross‑sector collaboration can dramatically reduce humanitarian needs.

We will discuss:
How governments can use climate forecasts to trigger early support for at‑risk communities,
The role of research in improving climate modelling, risk analysis, and evidence‑based decision‑making,
Why anticipatory action must become a standard tool in responding to climate‑driven crises,
What partnerships are needed to protect lives and livelihoods during this super El Niño and beyond.
Together, we can turn climate predictions into early action and early action into saved lives.

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Tipping points webinar series: Climate modeling and tipping points
Caroline Zimm,Senior Research Scholar (TISS, EQU)
Wednesday, September 9
10am - 11:30am EDT [16:00-17:30 CEST]
Online
RSVP at https://iiasa.ac.at/events/sep-2026/tipping-points-webinar-series-climate-modeling-and-tipping-points

This installment of the Tipping points webinar series will explore how climate models can help scientists understand climate tipping points and the risks of abrupt, potentially hard-to-reverse changes in the Earth system, while highlighting recent modeling insights, scientific challenges, and what models can and cannot tell us about tipping point risks.

Climate tipping points could trigger abrupt and potentially hard-to-reverse changes in parts of the Earth system. But how can scientists investigate these processes using climate models, and how confident can we be in the results?

This webinar will introduce the Tipping Points Modelling Intercomparison Project (TIPMIP), an international effort to coordinate modeling experiments on tipping points, and examine how it connects to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), an international climate modeling project.

Speakers will share recent insights and experiences from climate modeling and discuss scientific challenges and how modeling can support a clearer understanding of tipping point risks.

Agenda
Ricarda Winkelmann (Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology): talk TBA
Colin Jones (University of Leeds): Earth system modelling within TIPMIP: Experiment protocol and first multi-model results
Bette Otto-Bliesner (National Center for Atmospheric Research): Storylines of Earth System Tipping Point Risks at 2°C Global Warming: The TIPMIP-WhatIf Project
Followed by a moderated discussion with Lina Teckentrup (Barcelona Supercomputing Center)

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MEMA: Building Hazard Preparedness into Climate Resiliency – Part Five of the Webinar Series on Climate Resiliency in Massachusetts
Wednesday, September 9
11:45 am - 1:00 pm EST
Online
RSVP at https://ebcne.org/event/massachusetts-emergency-management-agency-part-four-of-the-webinar-series-on-climate-resiliency-in-massachusetts/
Cost: $30 -$125

A Webinar Series with the EBC Climate Change Committee
Program DetailsJoin the EBC Climate Change Committee for a webinar series exploring how Massachusetts state agencies are turning key insights from their past work into action in 2026 and beyond.

MBTA, Massport, MassDCR, MEMA, MassDOER, MA Fish & Game, and MWRA will present their key achievements in advancing climate resiliency over the past year, showcasing impactful projects, partnerships, and measurable outcomes from 2025. Agency leadership will also provide a forward-looking perspective on upcoming initiatives, programs, and policy developments planned for 2026 and beyond, offering insight into how each agency is preparing for evolving climate challenges. Together, these presentations highlight how agencies are implementing the Commonwealth’s ResilientMass Plan through coordinated investments, policies, and on-the-ground resilience actions.

In 2023, the Healey-Driscoll administration announced the ResilientMass Plan, an effort to prepare Massachusetts for mounting extreme weather events. Among the most significant hazards to the state are flooding from heavy precipitation, coastal flooding and erosion due to sea level rise, and high heat. Marybeth Groff, Hazard Mitigation & Climate Adaptation Coordinator for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), will provide an update on the ResilientMass Plan and the actions taken so far, as well as next steps for the Commonwealth.
The webinar will conclude with a moderated Q&A session for attendee questions.

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When the Plant Closes: Modernizing Unemployment Insurance for Climate and Industrial Shocks
Wednesday, September 9
12:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Online
RSVP at https://upenn.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_TgSTWInDSvGTJvpaMCq5EQ#/registrations

Climate change is already costing people their jobs. Hurricanes and wildfires can close businesses for weeks or months, while extreme heat cuts working hours in construction, agriculture, and warehouses. These shocks can leave workers suddenly without a paycheck or without a job to return to. At the same time, the shift to clean energy is reshaping local economies, especially in communities that rely on fossil fuels and other carbon-intensive industries. Together, these changes are exposing the limits of an unemployment insurance system built for nationwide recessions, not localized climate disasters or long-term industrial transitions. This seminar explores how unemployment insurance can be updated to respond more quickly and effectively through reforms such as partial benefits, stronger reemployment services, and triggers tied to local labor markets. We will also examine how labor-market modeling can identify the workers and regions most at risk—and whether today's safety net helps them recover or leaves economic shocks to ripple through communities. This conversation will be moderated by Heather Boushey, professor of practice at the Kleinman Center and former member of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist to President Biden’s Investing in America Cabinet.

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Strange New Worlds: The Science of Star Trek
Wednesday, September 9
6:30pm EDT
Carnegie Science Earth & Planets LaboratoryGreenewalt Auditorium, 5241 Broad Branch Road NW, Washington, D.C. 20015
And online
RSVP at https://carnegiescience.edu/strange-new-worlds-science-star-trek

Boldly go where no Neighborhood Lecture has gone before
For nearly 60 years, Star Trek has sent its crews toward the same question that working astrobiologists ask every day: What does life look like somewhere that isn't Earth?

In this Neighborhood Lecture, join astrobiologist Mike Wong—who studies the chemical fingerprints that could reveal life on distant worlds and hosts a podcast on the science of Star Trek—for a look at how the franchise's imagined planets stack up against what we actually know about worlds beyond our Solar System. You'll also hear from other Carnegie scientists about how their own research intersects with the Trek universe, followed by a panel discussion and audience Q&A.

Meet Mike Wong
Mike Wong is an astrobiologist and planetary scientist at Carnegie Science's Earth and Planets Laboratory, where he studies planetary atmospheres, habitability, biosignatures, and the emergence of life. He earned his doctorate in planetary science from Caltech and first set foot on Carnegie's campus in 2010 as a summer intern.

With Carnegie's Robert Hazen, he co-wrote "Time's Second Arrow: Evolution, Order, and a New Law of Nature" (W.W. Norton, 2026), which argues that evolution is a universal phenomenon extending well beyond biology, and he is co-authoring a revised edition of the textbook "Astrobiology: A Multidisciplinary Approach." He also co-leads a five-year, $5 million NASA-funded project developing AI tools to sharpen the search for life on distant worlds.

In his spare time, he hosts Strange New Worlds, a podcast examining science, technology, and culture through the lens of Star Trek.

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Making the Invisible Visible: Microplastics off the Massachusetts Coast
Wednesday, September 9
5:30 PM - 8:30 PM
SwissnexBoston420 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02138
RSVP at https://luma.com/epj9a6c7

Microplastics are a macro-problem — barely visible to the human eye, they're now found in every ecosystem on Earth. Join Swissnex to discover how Swiss researchers, regional stakeholders, and citizen scientists are collaborating to monitor ocean microplastics on Massachusetts’s coasts.

Microplastics are a macro-problem — barely visible to the human eye, they’ve spread through air and water and are now found in every ecosystem on Earth. In the face of this planetary challenge, what does meaningful local action look like?
The Sail & Explore Association (SEA) is a Swiss ocean research organization with the global mission to make invisible small-sized microplastics visible. The SEA, co-founded by Dr. Roman Lehner, who is also a principal investigator at the University of Bern, is launching a five-year collaboration with Rozalia Project, a Vermont- and Maine-based non-profit tackling marine debris in the Gulf of Maine and beyond, to monitor microplastics on Stellwagen Bank, a globally significant ocean ecosystem 25 miles east of Boston. Stretching between Cape Cod and Cape Ann, the underwater plateau is a key habitat for many marine species and one of the world’s main feeding grounds for humpback whales.

This event will explore the impact of small (<0.3mm) microplastics on marine ecosystems, as well as the techniques that researchers are using to monitor these invisible particles across the sea surface, water column, and atmosphere. Rather than presenting a finished solution, the conversation will open up a space to examine how scientific collaboration, public engagement, and place-based partnerships are shaping the future of ocean science on Stellwagen Bank and beyond.
The SEA and Rozalia are seeking sponsors and collaborations to further the mission.

Following the panel discussion, attendees are invited to join the conversation, introduce their work in the field, and explore the potential for impact-driven collaborations.

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Francis Fukuyama: In the Realm of the Last Man
Wednesday, September 9
6:00pm
Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02138
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/francis-fukuyama-at-the-cambridge-public-library-tickets-1992856031035

Harvard Book Store and the Cambridge Public Library welcome Francis Fukuyama—Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the author of The End of History and the Last Man—for a discussion of his new memoir, In the Realm of the Last Man.

About In the Realm of the Last Man
From the celebrated author of the international bestseller The End of History and the Last Man and other books on the most important political questions of our time, comes a strikingly personal intellectual memoir.

Francis Fukuyama, a leading public intellectual, is well-known for his landmark, bestselling works of political philosophy and history. Here, for the first time, he charts his political and intellectual evolution across five transformative decades. We follow him from the circle of students around the conservative intellectual Allan Bloom at Cornell, into the halls of power in Washington and at the RAND Corporation, and into private conversations with world leaders from Muammar Qaddhafi to China’s powerful elite. Fukuyama touches on his family’s story, including his relatives’ internment during World War II along with other Japanese Americans. And, in surprisingly personal terms, he reflects on the experiences that led him to reevaluate his own thinking, most notably his dramatic public break with the neoconservative movement over the invasion of Iraq.

More than a conventional memoir, In the Realm of the Last Manis personal history as political history—the story of a life that illuminates the troubled fate of democracy and liberalism over the last fifty years. Returning to and developing the concepts that have been central to his work—recognition, thymos, trust, identity, human nature, institutions, and the Last Man—Fukuyama brings the depth and richness of personal experience and pathbreaking scholarship to illuminate the crises of the twenty-first century.
Urgent, brilliant, and essential, Fukuyama’s In the Realm of the Last Man reveals a major thinker grappling in real time with the convulsions of history, and looking ahead to our possible future.

Bio
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He has previously taught at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and at the George Mason University School of Public Policy. Fukuyama was a researcher at the RAND Corporation and served as the deputy director for the State Department’s policy planning staff. He is the author of Liberalism and Its Discontents, Identity, Political Order and Political Decay, The Origins of Political Order, The End of History and the Last Man, Trust, and America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy. He lives with his wife in California. Photo

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Three Mile Island: Legacy & Resistance to Reopening
Wednesday, September 9
7:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Online
RSVP at https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-LGJU4j6TD2Hgf0rpgAr1A#/registration

The nuclear industry and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission are threatening to restart Pennsylvania's permanently closed and decommissioning Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power station. Three expert speakers will present the resistance to this dangerous misadventure in a webinar hosted by the Clamshell Alliance, Beyond Nuclear and Massachusetts Peace Action.

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Campus as Commons: Agroforestry and Shared Stewardship at Tufts
Thursday, September 10
12 – 1PM
Tufts, Curtis Hall Multipurpose Room, 474 Boston Avenue, Medford, MA 2155
And online
RSVP at https://tufts.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_trzRawg4RbKfQBvJ5ylTDw#/registration

Speaker: Mary Mattingly, Visual Artist
University campuses occupy significant tracts of land with contested histories of enclosure, aesthetic management, and institutional control. At Tufts, the transition from a working agricultural commons to a landscaped campus mirrors patterns documented across higher education, raising questions about what forms of access, stewardship, and shared governance remain possible on institutional land. Drawing on the commons governance framework of Elinor Ostrom and over a decade of large-scale social practice, artist Mary Mattingly will present her work on public food access, including Swale, a floating food forest in New York City's waterways that contributed to the city's first edible public foodway and introduce a proposed agroforestry installation at Tufts. The project would bring edible perennial plantings and participatory decision-making into the campus landscape, asking what it means for a university to act as steward of a living commons rather than as landowner.

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25 Years Later: Remembering September 11th and Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s Legacy of Leadership
Thursday, September 10
12:30pm
Edward M Kennedy Institute, 210 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125
RSVP at https://emkinstitute.org/events/september-10-25-years-later-remembering-september-11th-and-senator-edward-m-kennedys-legacy-of-leadership/

In commemoration of the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, join the Kennedy Institute to explore how Senator Edward M. Kennedy and his staff played a unique role in the Commonwealth’s response in the weeks and years that followed.

Join former members of Senator Kennedy’s staff, who worked closely to coordinate his office’s efforts, alongside Massachusetts family members who lost a loved one in the attacks. These firsthand accounts shine a light on how the Senator’s efforts supported families, mobilized assistance, and helped navigate unprecedented challenges. The response served as a model that continues to inform public service and disaster response today.

Moderated by Charlie Rose, Senior Vice President and Dean of City Year, the panel includes Steve Kerrigan, President and CEO of the Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Center and former Political Director for Senator Kennedy; Tom Crohan, Vice President and Counsel, US Law and Government Relations at John Hancock and former Aide in Senator Kennedy’s office; Cindy McGinty, Board Director of 9/11 Day; and Christie Coombs, President and Founder, The Jeff Coombs Memorial Foundation.

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The 9/11 terrorist attacks at 25: Assessing the legacy, addressing the future
Friday, September 11
1:00 PM - 4:00 PM EDT
The Brookings Institution, Falk Auditorium, 1775 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC
And online
RSVP at https://www.brookings.edu/events/the-9-11-terrorist-attacks-at-25-assessing-the-legacy-addressing-the-future/

This September marks the 25th anniversary of 9/11. The attacks and everything that followed reshaped American society, politics, the economy, national security, and the armed forces. The launch of the war on terror transformed U.S. Middle East policy, and recast America’s broader role in the world. A quarter of a century later, those effects continue to impact the country in ways that merit close examination.

Beyond prompting a reflection on how 9/11 reshaped the United States, the anniversary also offers an opportunity to assess how the terrorism threat has evolved since 2001, as well as to examine the future of terrorism—especially the challenges posed by emerging technologies.

On September 11, join the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at Brookings for a series of discussions to explore these issues. The program will open with a keynote conversation with Maryland Governor Wes Moore, who will reflect on the significance of 9/11 in the years since, followed by two panels: one on the lessons of the post-9/11 fight against terrorism, the other on the lasting implications of 9/11 for American politics, the economy, defense, and foreign policy. Online viewers can submit questions via e-mail to events@brookings.edu.

Agenda
Keynote: Governor Wes Moore’s reflections on 9/11 1:00 pm - 1:45 pm
KEYNOTE
Wes MooreGovernor - State of Maryland
MODERATOR
Michael E. O’Hanlon, Director of Research - Foreign Policy,Director - Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology,Co-Director - Africa Security Initiative,Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology,Philip H. Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy @MichaelEOHanlon
Terrorism’s evolving geography, networks, and technologies
1:45 pm - 2:45 pm
SPEAKERS
Tricia Bacon, Associate Professor, Department of Justice, Law and Criminology - American University @tricbacon
Vanda Felbab-Brown, Director - Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors,Co-Director - Africa Security Initiative,Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology @VFelbabBrown
Jeffrey Feltman, John C. Whitehead Visiting Fellow in International Diplomacy - Foreign Policy, Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology
Joseph Siegle, Director of Research - Africa Center for Strategic Studies @AfricaACSS
MODERATOR
Eric Schmitt, National Security Correspondent - The New York Times @EricSchmittNYT
Coffee break
2:45 pm - 2:55 pm
9/11’s impact on U.S. domestic and foreign policy
2:55 pm - 3:55 pm
SPEAKERS
Ben Harrism Vice President and Director - Economic Studies,The Bruce and Virginia MacLaury Chair @econ_harris
William A. Galston, Senior Fellow - Governance Studies, Center for Effective Public Management (CEPM),Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies Robert Kagan, Stephen & Barbara Friedman Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology
Mara Karlin, Visiting Fellow - Foreign Policy, Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology
Suzanne Maloney, Vice President and Director - Foreign Policy @MaloneySuzanne
MODERATOR
Michael E. O’Hanlon, Director of Research - Foreign Policy,Director - Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology,Co-Director - Africa Security Initiative,Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology,Philip H. Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy @MichaelEOHanlon

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Seasons of Fury: Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America
Friday, September 11
7:00pm
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-3820
RSVP at https://www.harvard.com/event/rozina-ali

About Seasons of Fury
A sweeping narrative history of the U.S. government’s broken compact with its Muslim citizens, culminating in the post-9/11 era of mass surveillance and increased violence—from an award-winning New York Times Magazine journalist.

In this closely reported and elegantly written book, Rozina Ali shows how the War on Terror, conceived in the wake of the September 11 attacks, only accelerated long-standing conflicts between American law enforcement and Muslim communities around the country. From the surveillance of Arab activists that began in the 1960s and laws in the 90s that broadened the definition of terrorism, to the mass detention of entire Muslim communities in the 2000s and the rise of think tanks and nonprofits that sowed panic about the threat of Islam itself, Seasons of Fury shows that the history of policies that have warped the American perception of Muslim communities reaches deep into our past.

Through the powerful stories of four families across eight decades, Ali narrates a range of Muslim experiences shaped by relentless suspicion and prejudice. Introducing readers to Abdeen Jabara, Mohammad Ali Chaudry, Shahina and Matin Siraj, and the pseudonymous Omar family, she shows how fears about American Muslims have always been inextricable from the Israel–Palestine conflict, stoking the idea of a religious war between Muslims and the West.

Ultimately, the U.S. government’s Islamophobic policies disillusioned generations of Muslims who sought the promise of the American dream only to find their communities torn apart, their relatives imprisoned, and their religion villainized by politicians and media. Ali’s story of how we got to our terrifying present is a magisterial accomplishment and a damning indictment of the United States’ abandonment of its core principles in the face of fear.

Bio
Rozina Ali is a journalist and contributing writer at New York Times Magazine, a fellow at Type Media Center, a fellow at New America, and was previously a senior editor at The Cairo Review of Global Affairs. Ali writes primarily about the War on Terror, Islamophobia, the Middle East, and South Asia, and her work has been featured in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Foreign Affairs, The Nation, The American Prospect, and more. Ali is a recipient of the National Magazine Award in Reporting. Photo

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Co-Designing Community-Centered AI for Environmental Science
September 14
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Columbia, Fayerweather Hall, 1180 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY 10027 Room 513
And online
RSVP at https://www.climate.columbia.edu/events/co-designing-community-centered-ai-environmental-science

Scientific and environmental data from the government, universities, and private organizations is often inaccessible and opaque. This is especially true for local residents from marginalized and disempowered communities, who have been historically disproportionately impacted by environmental pollution. There is a need, then, to make this data more understandable and useful for local residents interested in protecting their own environmental health.
This talk will outline a three-year partnership aimed at addressing this scientific data problem through the development of an AI-assisted framework that collects local water quality information, connects it to health outcomes and local concerns, and communicates it in language shaped by local community members themselves. Speakers will also discuss the water problems facing the Newark community and situate this water crisis within Newark’s broader environmental history.

Event Speakers
Aritra Dasgupta, Associate Professor of Data Science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology
Anthony Diaz, Director of the Newark Water Coalition
Neil Maher, Professor of History at the New Jersey Institute of Technology

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Crisis leadership 25 years after 9/11
Monday, September 14
1 – 2 p.m.
The Studio, 10th Floor, Kresge Building, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston
And online
RSVP at https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_ewISc7vDPDOeduu

SPEAKER(S) Kellie Bentz, First Head of Global Disaster Response and Relief, Airbnb
Anne MacDonald Grace, Principal and Head of Texas, Monument Advocacy
Leonard Marcus, Founding Director, National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, Harvard University
Richard Serino, Former Deputy Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency
Eric McNulty (moderator)m Associate Director, National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, Harvard University

Drawing on decades of active field investigation, teaching, and engagement, this event will present a forward-looking conversation on what crisis leadership means 25 years after 9/11.

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“Living Civics” Film Screening & Conversation
Monday, September 14
6 PM - 8 PM
Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, 210 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/living-civics-film-screening-conversation-tickets-1996669531317

Exclusive screening of the new documentary “Living Civics,” followed by a panel conversation with civics education leaders from the film.
How do we inspire the next generation to view civic engagement not just as a responsibility—but as a calling?
The Edward M. Kennedy Institute, Ibis Group, Roadtrip Nation and Whiteboard Advisors invite you to join us at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate (210 Morrissey Blvd, Boston, MA 02125) on Monday, September 14 at 6:00 PM ET for a screening of Roadtrip Nation’s new documentary, “Living Civics.”

Follow the journeys of three young adults on a cross-country road trip as they meet leaders who have built their lives around civic work, and hear inspiring stories and insights directly from the leaders and roadtrippers featured in the film. This is more than just a screening—it’s a chance to connect, spark dialogue, and better understand the tools, knowledge, and passions necessary to help democracy thrive.

Light refreshments will be served in the lobby when doors open at 5:15 PM ET. Immediately following the screening, we will be joined by Danielle Allen, Director of Harvard's Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, Louise Dubé, CEO of iCivics, and David McCullough III, Co-Founder and CEO of the American Exchange Project for a conversation on efforts to expand civic engagement and education in the United States.

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Supremacy: How Rule by the Court Replaced Government by the People
Monday, September 14
7:00pm
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-3820

About Supremacy
From two acclaimed legal scholars, a new history of the Supreme Court that overturns our most basic assumptions about its role in our democracy, showing how it seized the power it now wields.

Does the U.S. Constitution force us to live under the rule of nine robed lawyers? Many Americans assume that it does. It is commonly said that the Supreme Court has always had the power to decide what the Constitution means and to strike down any act of Congress that violates the justices’ dictates. Even as the Court has used this power to upend democracy—erasing federal laws that once prevented presidential autocracy and protected the right to vote—we are told there is nothing everyday Americans can do, as if our ability to govern ourselves requires the Court to answer our most fundamental questions for us.

But what if that isn’t accurate? What if the Court was not given the power it now wields, but rather seized it?
That is the revelation of Nikolas Bowie and Daphna Renan’s masterful new account of the Supreme Court. In a sweeping narrative of over 200 years of American history, they demonstrate that “judicial supremacy” was not written into the Constitution and has always been challenged as fundamentally at odds with it. Far from being an eternal principle, the power the Court claims to override Congress’s interpretation of the Constitution took hold in reaction to abolition and Reconstruction—not to protect democracy, but to weaken it.

Supremacy charts how the Court has repeatedly sabotaged the efforts of Congress to broaden democracy by enabling presidents, corporations, and the wealthy to ignore enacted law. It also challenges how even liberals understand the Court’s most celebrated rulings—including Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade—showing how the left has unwittingly subscribed to the very ideology that now threatens it.

At every step, Bowie and Renan recover a lost constitutional tradition, one forged by abolitionists, labor leaders, suffragists, and civil rights pioneers. These individuals presented another way forward, in which power is returned to where the Constitution put it—Congress—and everyday Americans have more of a say in the law that shapes our lives.

Bios
Nikolas Bowie is the Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He was a clerk for Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Daphna Renan is the Peter B. Munroe and Mary J. Munroe Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She was a clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Photo Credit: Jessica Scranton
Tomiko Brown-Nagin is dean of Harvard Radcliffe Institute, one of the world’s leading centers for interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts, and professions. She is also the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, a professor of history in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences and a distinguished scholar in the fields of law and history.

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Changing the Conversation: Intro to Effective Climate Change Communication
Tuesday, September 15
1 PM - 2 PM EDT
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/changing-the-conversation-intro-to-effective-climate-change-communication-registration-1994625694145

The National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation (NNOCCI) is a global leader in research-based climate communications.

Trying to communicate climate change, but people just don't seem to respond to your facts and science? As important as knowing the science of climate change, social science provides evidence-based practices that allow us to communicate climate science more effectively. Please join us on Tuesday, September 15th from 1-2 pm ET / 10-11 am PT to be introduced to the work of the National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation (NNOCCI), a collective of more than 900 climate communicators and nearly 500 organizations. In this free webinar, learn how specific values and metaphors make your audience more receptive to climate change messaging and join a community of communicators changing the climate discourse to be more positive, civic-minded, and solutions-focused.

NNOCCI has partnered on dozens of peer-reviewed publications that describe its unique combination of elements for training and highlighting the network's outcomes. NNOCCI is supported through a fiscal sponsorship with The Marine Mammal Center. With more than 15 years of success, NNOCCI is widely recognized as the United States' leading climate change interpretation training program, and recently expanded its work into Canada.

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Building better 3D cell models: Advances in organoid development, automation, and biomedical research
Wednesday, September 16
12:00 PM ET
Online
RSVP at https://view6.workcast.net/register?cpak=8581973176426375&referrer=SciencePage&utm_campaign=webinars2026

Fred Gage, Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, La Jolla, CA
Prisca Liberali, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Karim Ben M’Barek, i-Stem
Corbeil-Essonnes, France
Moderator: Erika Gebel Berg, Ph.D., Science/AAAS, Washington, DC

The rapid evolution of organoid technology is transforming biomedical research. From modeling human development to investigating disease and the biological processes that drive aging, 3D cell models are enabling researchers to study human biology in ways that were previously impossible. As these systems become increasingly sophisticated, the challenge is no longer simply building them, but generating robust, reproducible models that can be deployed at scale.

This webinar will bring together researchers working across organoid development, quantitative analysis, and disease modeling to discuss the approaches that are moving the field forward. Topics will include advances in differentiation strategies, methods for evaluating and selecting high-quality 3D models, and the role of automation in streamlining complex workflows. Speakers will also explore how these advances are expanding the use of organoids and other 3D cell models in developmental biology, drug discovery, and research into neurodegenerative and other age-related diseases.

Participants will learn:
How advances in differentiation, characterization, and automation are improving the development and reproducibility of 3D cell models.
Current approaches for building and applying organoid systems to study human development, disease, and aging.
How next-generation 3D cell models are expanding opportunities for translational research and drug discovery.

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The Endangerment Finding: What's at Stake in the Courts and How to Take Action
Wednesday, September 16
12:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Online
RSVP at https://ceres-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/3017870698026/WN_pRIipGuwQTCnjGZO_Vyt2w#/registration

Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency repealed the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which determined under the Clean Air Act that greenhouse gases threaten public health and wellbeing. For more than 15 years, it has allowed the EPA to set standards to reduce pollution across industries — providing the stable policy environment that businesses depend on to plan and invest in key industries such as energy, manufacturing, technology, and transportation. Organizations, states, and localities are challenging the repeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Ceres is working with pro bono counsel at Foley Hoag on an amicus brief supporting the challenge, focused on the regulatory certainty and predictability the finding provides for business planning. Legal experts and business leaders will share insights on the D.C. Circuit case and how leading businesses and investors can help uphold the EPA’s ability to protect the U.S. economy and public from the risks that climate pollution poses to human health and economic competitiveness.

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Wildfire smoke: The health and environmental impacts
Wednesday, September 16
1 – 1:45 p.m.
The Studio, 10th Floor, Kresge Building, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston
And online
RSVP at https://hsph.harvard.edu/events/wildfire-smoke-the-health-and-environmental-impacts/

SPEAKER(S) Joseph Allen, Professor of Exposure Assessment Science, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Francesca Dominici, Clarence James Gamble Professor of Biostatistics, Population, and Data Science, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Mary Johnson, Principal Research Scientist, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Mary Rice, Mark and Catherine Winkler Associate Professor of Environmental Respiratory Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

This summer, wildfire smoke degraded air quality across parts of Canada, the U.S., and other regions. In this event, experts will explain how wildfire smoke affects the lungs, heart, and body; who is most at risk; and how to reduce exposure. The discussion will cover practical steps for individuals, schools, and workplaces, including improving indoor air filtration, using portable air cleaners, and wearing protective masks.

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Older Homelessness: An Emerging Challenge for Cities
Wednesday, September 16
4:00 PM - 5:15 PM ET
Harvard Kennedy School, Bloomberg Center for Cities, Third Floor, Taubman Building, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
And online
RSVP at https://hksexeced.tfaforms.net/f/registration?e=a4oPp000001hBxJIAU

Homelessness among older adults is emerging as one of the most significant—and least understood—challenges facing cities today. Older adults are the fastest-growing segment of the population experiencing homelessness, and research suggests that the number of people age 65 and older experiencing homelessness in some locations could nearly triple by 2030. As rising housing costs, fixed incomes, health challenges, and demographic shifts converge, cities are increasingly being called upon to respond to the unique needs of an aging homeless population. This conversation will bring together leading researchers and practitioners working on the front lines of elder homelessness to examine the scope of the challenge, emerging evidence, and promising solutions. Speakers will explore the pathways that lead older adults into homelessness, the connections between housing instability, health, and aging, and the ways in which cities, health systems, and service providers can better prevent and respond to homelessness among older adults. Attendees will gain insights into the latest research on older homelessness, as well as practical lessons from communities developing innovative approaches to housing, healthcare, supportive services, and cross-sector collaboration. The discussion will also examine broader questions relevant to scholars, policymakers, and practitioners alike, including how cities can prepare for the growing scale of need, measure the effectiveness of interventions, and design systems that promote both housing stability and healthy aging. This event is co-hosted by the Bloomberg Center for Cities, the Harvard Urban Health Initiative, and the Initiative on Health and Homelessness at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Doors open and food is available at 3:45 p.m. The in-person event is open to Harvard University ID holders only. Virtual event is open to all. Registration is required as space is limited.

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Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor with Aziz Rana: End Times Fascism
Wednesday, September 16
Starts at 6:15 PM
Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard Street, Brookline, MA 02446
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/naomi-klein-astra-taylor-with-aziz-rana-end-times-fascism-tickets-1993542804192
Cost: $7.63

End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World
A scathing investigation into the apocalyptic thinking of the Christian nationalists, tech-bro reactionaries, and populist survivalists who increasingly define the contemporary right—and a recipe for how to fight them.

As the planet burns and shared reality melts, a new iteration of the far right is on the march. How can we understand this dangerous new development, and what resources can we draw on to resist it? In their scathing assessment of the contemporary scene, the celebrated activists and authors Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor explore how the religious fundamentalists, Silicon Valley technologists, and ethno-nationalists who make up this apocalyptic alliance share more than one might think: they are united in their belief that some kind of cleansing cataclysm is coming, whether through the manifestation of messianic prophecy, the rampages of a resource- and job-consuming artificial intelligence, or the purported existential threat of immigration and cultural replacement. Rather than avoiding this conflagration, they welcome it, convinced they will be among the saved on the other side.

“End Times Fascism” is the ideology of the actors who strive to make the world unlivable and then seek to protect themselves from the fallout—whether by repairing to luxurious private islands, rocketing off to Mars, or bunkering the nation to keep their enemies at bay. The new survivalists have accumulated power, but they are far from impregnable. As Klein and Taylor show via original reporting and analysis, their many internal conflicts and contradictions and their nihilistic inability to envision a shared future, even for their ostensible allies, leave them vulnerable to a new kind of “pro-life” politics—rooted in reverence for our shared existence and regard for the earth we inhabit and must protect.

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker, and the bestselling author of Doppelganger, No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, and other classic books, which have been translated into thirty-five languages. She is an associate professor of geography and codirector of the Centre for Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia, and she writes a regular column for The Guardian. Doppelganger was the winner of the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction and was named one of the ten best books of the year by New York magazine, Slate, and Time.

Astra Taylor is an award-winning writer, activist, and documentarian, and a cofounder of the Debt Collective. She is the author of The People’s Platform, which won the American Book Award; Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone; and The Age of Insecurity. Taylor regularly writes for publications including The New Yorker and The New York Times. Taylor toured with the band Neutral Milk Hotel and was the 2023 CBC Massey Lecturer.

Aziz Rana is the J. Donald Monan, S.J., University Professor of Law and Government at Boston College. He is the author of the books The Two Faces of American Freedom and The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them. His writing has appeared in n+1, Dissent, The Boston Review, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Guardian, among other publications.

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From Survival to Advocacy: A Conversation with Nadia Murad and Ambassador Samantha Power
Wednesday, September 16
7 – 8 p.m.
JFK Jr. Forum, Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
And livestreamed
RSVP at https://www.youtube.com/@HarvardIOP/streams

SPEAKER(S) Nadia Murad, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Samantha Power (Moderator), Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy; USAID Administrator (2021-2025); U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (2013-2017)

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and global human rights advocate Nadia Murad joins Ambassador Samantha Power for a conversation on resilience, justice, and the fight to protect human rights in an increasingly turbulent world.

In 2014, Murad was abducted and held captive by ISIS after the group attacked her Yazidi community in Iraq. After escaping, she transformed her experience into a powerful global campaign against conflict-related sexual violence and for the rights of survivors and displaced communities.

Murad and Power will reflect on the enduring importance of bearing witness, demanding accountability, and defending human dignity.

Please register with a valid Harvard email address to attend in-person. All JFK Jr. Forums are publicly livestreamed on our YouTube channel.

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Mark Peterson: The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution
Wednesday, September 16
7 PM - 8:30 PM
BC, Gasson Hall, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Newton, MA 02467
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mark-peterson-the-making-and-breaking-of-the-american-constitution-tickets-1989263826655

Mark Peterson, historian of early America, discusses his recent work on the thousand-year history of the American constitution.
Mark Peterson is the Edmund S. Morgan Professor of History at Yale University, where he teaches early American history and serves as the Faculty Director of Yale’s Lewis Walpole Library. He earned his Ph.D. in History at Harvard University and previously taught at the University of Iowa and the University of California, Berkeley, where he was Chair of the History Department from 2015–2018. His most recent book is The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History (2026). He is also the author of The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630–1865, and The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England.

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Lessons in Environmental Diplomacy
Thursday, September 17
12 – 1PM
Tufts, Curtis Hall Multipurpose Room, 474 Boston Avenue, Medford, MA 02155
And online
RSVP at https://tufts.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_md3V29KPRiqF4tUNrE15XQ#/registration

Speaker: Jennifer Baldwin, Assistant Director, Yale University Office of Sustainability
We are in a critical decade to avoid the worst predicted impacts of climate change, yet the global institutional architecture of climate action is undergoing a process of razing, renovation, and renewal. Jen will share lessons learned from her career as a practitioner designing climate and energy foreign assistance projects in the Global South for the United States federal government and multilateral institutions, parallels between this work and domestic climate action (in the public, private, and non-profit sectors, including higher education), and what we all can be doing to reinvigorate climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts going forward.

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The Cost of Dependence: Fossil Fuels, National Security, and the Path to Energy Resilience
Thursday, September 17
1:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Online
RSVP at https://ceres-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/6017870699580/WN_caN3lpkpQ7-2ErBL48BqDQ#/registration

The conflict in Iran has sent oil prices surging, supply chains scrambling, and strategic planners back to the drawing board. But it has also illuminated something deeper: the mounting strategic and economic cost of the United States' reliance on fossil fuels and a new opening for change. Join Ceres for a candid conversation with national security veterans, clean energy leaders, and institutional investors on what this moment reveals and what it demands. From Pentagon energy resilience doctrine to corporate clean energy procurement and capital allocation, we'll explore why a diversified U.S. energy base isn't just an environmental imperative but also a security and financial one. During this webinar, participants will: - Understand how the Iran conflict has exposed the strategic and economic costs of fossil fuel dependence, including oil price volatility, supply chain fragility, and the geopolitcal risk to U.S. foreign policy. - Assess the near- and medium-term outlook for U.S. energy markets and the clean energy transition - Identify concrete steps companies can take now to reduce vulnerability from fossil fuel reliance: from clean energy procurement to supply chain diversification — and why this is both a risk management and competitive imperative. - Understand how institutional investors are assessing capital allocation in response to geopolitical energy risk, and what a shift toward a more diversified U.S. energy base means for portfolio strategy and corporate engagement.

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Clough Colloquium: Leadership for a More Perfect Union and What the Constitution Means to Us
Thursday, September 17
4pm
BC, Robsham Theater Arts Center, 50 St. Thomas More Road, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdXdgQhVpNM7ckWUtuiSW4GVfgLQ2FiGBtfhG7AdF_2U3KV8g/viewform

Throughout the history of the United States, the Constitution has been central to our public life. It has inspired hope and provoked despair. It has remained in place as few other national constitutions have. Yet it has also been amended, and some today think it needs to change again. At a moment when our founding document's basic meaning seems more contested than ever, how should we look at the Constitution?

Inspired by Heidi Schreck’s award-winning play and in the spirit of Constitution and Citizenship Day, this event offers the Boston College community an opportunity to reflect on our Constitution.

In addition to showcasing contributions from select students and faculty, this year’s celebration will feature two renowned scholars: Doris Kearns Goodwin, the celebrated presidential historian, and Akhil Reed Amar, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University and the author, most recently, of Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840–1920 (2025).

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NEQ Symposium on Environmental Histories of New England, 1600-2026
Friday, September 18
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM EDT
Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02215
RSVP at https://www.masshist.org/events/neq-symposium-environmental-histories

New England is a region defined by its landscape, its climate, its geography, and its peoples. Lined with harbors along its coastlines, ringed with mountains along its northern and western edges, and interleaved with dozens of rivers, the long history of the region that now comprises six states offers rich material for scholars exploring how the environment has shaped society and culture. Equally important have been studies of how indigenous and settler colonist communities have contributed to, changed, or harmed the environment of the region. This symposium brings together scholars of New England’s varied environments to explore exciting directions in environmental studies, public history, and pedagogy.

Co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Historical Society and The New England Quarterly, with additional support from the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library.

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Climate & Fossil Fuels
Friday, September 18
12 PM - 3 PM EDT
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/climate-fossil-fuels-tickets-1989266334155

Climate, Humanity, Rights & Unity: United Actions For a Just & Regenerative Future
The Climate Emergency Mobilization Task Force presents:
Climate & Fossil Fuels

Plea$e DONATE!
Website: https://www.cemtf.org/

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Reawakening Humanity’s Sacred Connection with Earth
Sunday, September 20
8 AM - 5:30 PM EDT
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-reawakening-humanitys-sacred-connection-with-earth-tickets-1996170289070

An invitation to honor each other & Earth through spiritual and indigenous worldviews as vital to our efforts to address the climate crisis.

The Fetzer Institute Environment Collaborative invites you to honor our sacred relationship with the Earth, uniting perspectives for bold climate solutions to address the climate crisis through spiritual and indigenous worldviews.
Together, we will enter a current of spirit that begins from within and flows and grows among us in shared ceremony and dialogue, reflection, encounter and purpose throughout the day. We will celebrate and explore the sacred spirit that connects us to each other, all living beings, and our Earth while honoring the grief and joy, struggle and courage that accompany our work.

Through mediation and dialogue, music and movement, and evidence-based stories of transformation, we will discover how spirituality and ancient wisdom are vital forces for meaningful climate action. Together, we will deepen our relationships, chart practical pathways of change, and generate authentic collaborations that emanate from spirit and manifest into effective climate solutions that are necessary for a just, loving and compassionate future.

To learn more about the event please visit our website: https://fetzer.org/climate-week/

About the Hosts, Facilitators, and Speakers
Fetzer Institute Environment Collaborative
The event host is Fetzer Institute’s Environment Collaborative, a growing network of leaders and organizations who understand that our environmental challenges are deeply spiritual in nature. These changemakers bring together diverse faith traditions, Indigenous wisdom, contemplative practices, ecological science, and systems thinking. What unites them is a commitment to re-centering our relationship with Earth — not as a commodity to be managed, but as a sacred connection to be honored and cultivated.

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Against Tech Oligarchy: Worker Resistance in the World’s Most Powerful Industry
Monday, September 21
7:00pm
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-3820

About Against Tech Oligarchy
As tech bosses fall in line with the right, tech workers are fighting back. This is the rousing inside story of their movement—and the way it spawned an anti-worker backlash now reshaping the industry.

After Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the tech industry sprang into action to oppose his right-wing agenda, with workers and CEOs alike joining mass mobilizations against the new president’s anti-immigrant policies. But it wasn’t long before the tech bosses started to fall in line with the new administration.

In response, tens of thousands of tech workers protested against their own employers for betraying the progressive values that once defined the industry—including organizing against military contracts, walking out to protest sexism, and even launching a wave of union drives. By the early 2020s, these workers had sparked what observers were calling the tech worker movement, one that seemed capable of checking the industry’s reckless growth and reactionary drift.

But as their struggle grew, so did the employers’ backlash. A new class consciousness took root among tech's billionaire owners. Hell-bent on stamping out any and all dissent, tech executives embraced Trumpism, fired organizers, and began lashing out against the “woke” ideology they blamed for turning their once loyal employees against them—and replacing the good tech jobs of the 2010s with incessant layoffs, grind culture, and a management style that treats workers as disposable.

Against Tech Oligarchy provides a gripping account of this inspiring workers' movement and the rise of the hostile labor politics that define Silicon Valley today.

Bios
JS Tan is getting his PhD at MIT and formerly worked in tech. His work has been featured in The New York Times, MIT Technology Review, Dissent, Jacobin, Foreign Policy, The Baffler, and The Guardian, among other outlets.

Clarissa Redwine helped organize the Kickstarter union and cofounded the tech organizing conference Circuit Breakers. Her organizing work has been featured in The New York Times, the BBC, The Guardian, The Verge, TechCrunch, and elsewhere.
Ben Tarnoff is a writer based in Massachusetts. His most recent book is Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, co-authored with Quinn Slobodian.

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Brave Leadership for Climate Solutions
Tuesday, September 22
10 AM - 11:30 AM EDT
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/brave-leadership-for-climate-solutions-tickets-1998400713329

Helping leaders see reality more clearly, uncover blind spots, and take one immediate step toward stronger leadership
An Interactive Leadership Lab | Climate Week NYC 2026
Building the Leadership, Energy, Impact and Action Capacity to Navigate Climate, AI and Systemic Change

About this Event
An Interactive Leadership Lab | NY Climate Week
The climate transition is no longer a sustainability challenge—it is a leadership challenge.
Organisations today are navigating an unprecedented convergence of climate transition, AI disruption, geopolitical uncertainty, changing regulation and rising stakeholder expectations. While many organisations understand what needs to change, far fewer are prepared for how these forces are reshaping leadership, decision-making and organisational resilience.
The greatest challenge is no longer developing better climate strategies. It is developing leaders and change makers who can make better decisions when the future is uncertain.

“Climate transition requires more than technology, policy and investment. It requires leaders who can think differently, adapt quickly and make courageous decisions in the face of uncertainty.”

This highly interactive Leadership Lab explores one of the most overlooked barriers to accelerating climate action: the way leaders/we interpret complexity, uncertainty and change.

Rather than another discussion about climate targets or transformation frameworks, this session provides participants with the opportunity to experience a facilitated leadership diagnostic. Participants will examine how they currently respond to uncertainty and identify the leadership capabilities needed to accelerate change within their own organisations.

What you’ll experience
Participants will:
Explore how climate transition, AI and generally systemic disruption are changing the way organisations and leaders must lead.
Examine how their current assumptions influence decision-making.
Learn practical approaches for making better decisions in increasingly complex environments.

What you’ll leave with
A clearer understanding of the leadership capabilities required for successful change and climate transition.
Greater awareness of how your own decision-making influences organisational change.
Practical tools for navigating uncertainty with greater confidence and adaptability.
Map your leadership across six dimensions of complexity and identify the capability most limiting you right now. Observe how you respond when familiar assumptions stop working.
One concrete behavioural shift to strengthen your leadership immediately.
A deeper appreciation of why leadership mindset is becoming one of the most important enablers of climate action and change management.

Who should attend?
This session is designed for leaders, sustainability professionals, transformation leaders, policymakers, entrepreneurs and anyone responsible for helping organisations navigate transitions, systemic change or climate adaptation.
Whether you lead sustainability, operations, strategy, innovation or organisational transformation, this interactive session will help you strengthen one of the most critical capabilities of the decade: leading effectively when certainty no longer exists.

Facilitators
Ana Alonso – Sustainability strategist and transformational leader with extensive experience helping organisations navigate sustainability, energy transition and organisational change. Director of PURE (purevalue360.com) and Empowering Progress (empoweringprogress.com)
Sanjay Silas – Former international banking CEO and INSEAD executive coach specialising in leadership during periods of complexity, transition and uncertainty.
Nidhi Arora – ICF executive coach and former banking executive helping senior leaders develop clarity, resilience and adaptive leadership in rapidly changing environments.
“Climate transition requires more than technology, policy and investment. It requires leaders who can think differently, adapt quickly and make courageous decisions in the face of uncertainty.”

About Empowering Progress:
Empowering Progress helps leaders, professionals and organisations navigate complexity, transformation and growth with greater clarity, capability and purpose.
About Pure:
PURE (www.PureValue360.com) brings together a network of experienced sustainability and business experts to help organisations turn sustainability ambition into measurable business impact. PURE supports businesses in embedding sustainability into strategy, operations and implementation, helping to bridge the gap between ambition and action.

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Charging Ahead: The Economic Opportunity of America’s Battery Belt
Wednesday, September 23
10:00 am – 11:00 am (EST)
GH on the Park, 54 W 40th St, New York, NY
And online
RSVP at https://www.c2es.org/event/charging-ahead-the-economic-opportunity-of-americas-battery-belt/

Batteries are crucial to enabling the energy transition, with demand from the energy storage and electric vehicle markets expected to nearly quadruple from 2024 to 2030. While most battery manufacturing today is concentrated in Asia, the United States is rapidly building out the domestic battery supply chain across both lithium-ion and emerging battery technologies.
In the Southeast United States, where much of the battery investment to date has been concentrated, the industry could produce $140 billion in economic output and power 374,000 jobs by 2035—but only with strong state and federal policy support.

The C2ES Regional Clean Economies initiative has convened more than 250 leaders of business, government, academia, and communities across the Southeast region to explore how a secure, resilient, domestic battery supply chain can strengthen U.S. competitiveness while delivering economic benefits to local communities. Join us for a discussion on the opportunities this growing industry presents, and how necessary state and federal policies can help to unlock its full potential.

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The New Blueprint: Climate Resiliency by Design
Wednesday, September 23
10 AM - 11:30 AM EDT
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-new-blueprint-climate-resiliency-by-design-virtual-only-tickets-1998489615237

Discover how NYC is shaping the future of climate-resilient infrastructure & buildings through new policy, guidance, and real-world lessons.

The New Blueprint: Climate Resiliency by Design
As policymakers, planners and designers, we have learned a great deal over the last decade about the science and real-world impacts of our changing climate, as well as how to innovate and guide capital projects in New York City to become more resilient. We are now at a pivotal moment where this knowledge is being used to measure effectiveness and inform climate resilience requirements for the city's infrastructure and buildings. Representatives from the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, NYC Housing Preservation and Development, and Port Authority of NY and NJ will highlight key areas of focus within evolving climate resiliency design guidelines. This panel will provide valuable insights on updates to climate resiliency design requirements for capital infrastructure and building projects throughout New York City, while also showcasing lessons learned from ongoing and completed pilot projects.

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Extreme Heat and Beyond: Power Infrastructure for a More Demanding Future
Wednesday, September 23
11:30 am – 1:00 pm (EST)
GH on the Park, 54 W 40th Street, 10th Floor, New York, NY
And online
RSVP at https://www.c2es.org/event/extreme-heat-and-beyond/

As rising power demand and extreme heat put greater pressure on critical systems, reliability and affordability is becoming central to economic and community prosperity.

​This event, hosted by C2ES, and featuring members of the Business Environmental Leadership Council (BELC), will bring together leaders across power, technology, finance, research and local government to explore how innovation and investment can help keep essential services, from electricity to water, operating under more demanding conditions.

​Join C2ES and partners at Solutions Central for a conversation on practical solutions that strengthen infrastructure performance, improve coordination, and move resilience from planning to implementation.

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Energy Transitions as Population Health Interventions
Wednesday, September 23
Noon - 1:05 p.m.
UC Berkeley, 310 Social Sciences Building, Berkeley, CA
And online
RSVP at https://events.berkeley.edu/events/event/326398-demography-brown-bag-seminar-with-misbath-daouda-ener

Misbath Daouda
Misbath Daouda is an Assistant Professor of Health Equity and Environmental Justice in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences. Her research focuses on the distribution of health benefits from energy transitions in the context of climate change in the US and in West Africa. Using environmental epidemiology, exposure modeling, and qualitative methods, she aims to generate community-driven evidence that can support the centering of equity in energy policy and initiatives to achieve just transitions. Prior to joining UC Berkeley, she obtained her MPH from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and her PhD in Environmental Health Sciences from Columbia Mailman School of Public Health.

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American Made, Deployed Everywhere: How big is the market for industrial decarbonization technologies?
Wednesday, September 23
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm (EST)
GH on the Park, 54 W 40th St, New York, 10th Floor
And online
RSVP at https://www.c2es.org/event/american-made-deployed-everywhere/

Industrial decarbonization presents a major opportunity to strengthen U.S. manufacturing and compete globally while reducing emissions. In this event, C2ES will launch the new Industrial Decarbonization Markets program to accelerate these efforts and release new research identifying technologies where the United States can lead in manufacturing, deployment, and exports. Experts will convene to discuss how the economic and emissions benefits of these technologies can help build support for durable industrial decarbonization policies.

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From Lawn to Garden: Artistic Forms of Vegetal Resistance
Thursday, September 24
12 – 1PM
Tufts, Curtis Hall Multipurpose Room, 474 Boston Avenue, Medford, MA 02155
And online
RSVP at https://tufts.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_78EXisrHTMOXfRG9dolDpQ#/registration

Speaker: Dr. Giovanni Aloi, Adjunct Professor at School of the Art Institute of Chicago
At the intersection of the research developed in two of his books, Lawn, published last year by Bloomsbury, and Avant-gardeners, forthcoming with Prestel, the lawn and the garden emerge as cultural forms through which to rethink the relationship between art and nature. As a monoculture, the lawn suppresses biodiversity, demands water, fertilizers, pesticides, and repeated mowing, while offering no hospitality to animals and other forms of life. A rooted manifestation of outdated colonial and patriarchal ideals of order and normativity, the lawn conceals histories of exclusion and extraction, making the garden’s unrulier, more relational forms of cultivation all the more politically significant. The recent interest in gardening as an artistic practice constitutes a form of dissent against the extractive logics that have impoverished soils and reduced the living world to resource or passive backdrop. Many contemporary artists are now working with the vegetal world, unsettling the categories of artwork and process, authorship and collaboration. In their practices, cultivation becomes a way of unlearning modernity’s distance from the earth and of imagining new forms of situated belonging, more attuned to the relations of care that make all life thrive.

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Tech & Regulation Seminar: Intelligence by the Sip: AI's Coming Token Divide
Thursday, September 24
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM ET
Harvard, Wexner 434AB, 19 Eliot Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
And online
RSVP at https://hksexeced.tfaforms.net/f/registration?e=a4oPp000001hlcbIAA

Please join us for this M-RCBG Technology & Regulation seminar, presented in hybrid format.Tom Wheeler, M-RCBG Senior Research Fellow and former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, leads this seminar on artificial intelligence and the token divide.John Haigh, Co-Director, M-RBCG, will moderate.This seminar discussion will take place in Wexner 434AB for those with an HUID who wish to attend in person. Others may join us remotely via Zoom. Lunch will be served.

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Why welfare states depend on economic growth - and how that could change
Thursday, September 24
12pm to 2pm EDT [5:00pm to 7:00pm BST]
Reserve your place
The Diamond - Lecture Theatre 3
And online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/why-welfare-states-depend-on-economic-growth-and-how-that-could-change-tickets-1990099552333

Join us for this fascinating discussion with Professor Milena Büchs, Professor of Sustainable Welfare at the Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds, as we explore the relationship between economic growth and the welfare state.

Critiques of economic growth are receiving increased scientific and public attention. The post-growth literature discusses how wellbeing for all can be achieved within planetary boundaries. However, current welfare states are often seen as growth dependent. The drivers of welfare state growth dependencies and related policy responses remain poorly understood. In this talk, Milena will give an overview of drivers and policy responses based on research which used a semi-systematic literature review and was funded by the Horizon Europe funded MAPS project. The analysis identifies key drivers that the literature discusses such as the growth dependence of employment and related welfare funds, rent extraction and for-profit provisioning, increasing inequality, ageing societies, political power of vested interests, and environmental impacts. Related policy responses proposed in the literature include maintaining employment without growth, using less growth dependent revenues, limiting rent-seeking and political power of vested interests, pre- and redistribution, preventative health approaches and climate change mitigation. The talk will also briefly summarise how the literature discusses the question whether welfare state growth independence can be achieved within a capitalist system.

The event will include a drinks reception, audience Q&A, and an opportunity for informal networking and discussion following the talk. A limited online attendance option will also be available for those unable to join us in person.

About Milena
Milena Büchs is Professor of Sustainable Welfare at the Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds, UK. Milena's research focuses on sustainable welfare, eco-social policy, just transitions and climate justice. She has published widely on the relationship between economic growth and welfare states and the question of how welfare states can be transformed so that everyone's needs can be met within planetary limits. Milena is currently a Co-Investigator in two Horizon Europe projects, MAPS - Models, Assessments and Policy for Sustainability, and ToBe - Towards a Sustainable Wellbeing Economy. In MAPS, she is leading a work package on sustainable welfare. Prior to joining the University of Leeds in 2016, she was a Lecturer and Associate Professor in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Southampton (2005-2016), and completed a PhD in Social Policy at the Humboldt University Berlin.
The session is part of the 'Rethinking Prosperity on a Finite Planet' event series.

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BOST-Ig: An Ig Nobel Celebration
Thursday, September 24
5:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Swissnex, 420 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
RSVP at https://luma.com/2h833sy1

​The Ig Nobel Prize has been a fixture of Boston’s academic calendar since its founding in 1991, honoring research that first makes you laugh, then makes you think. This year, the Igs are heading abroad, with the 36th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony set to take place in Zurich on September 3. In recognition of the prize’s deep local roots, Swissnex and Improbable Research present BOST-Ig, a special Ig Nobel celebration in Cambridge, MA, on September 24, 2026.
​We will have the honor of welcoming several winners of the 2026 Ig Nobel Prize to discuss their award-winning research. The evening will also include a musical tribute to the late Tom Lehrer, the celebrated songwriter, mathematician, and long-time friend of the Igs, performed by Amanda Palmer and Thomas Michel, as well as an exhibition of works from the Museum of Bad Art, Boston’s premiere cultural institution dedicated to the collection and preservation of “art too bad to be ignored.”

​Join us for an evening celebrating remarkable, improbable, and unexpected achievements in the sciences, arts, and beyond.

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The Walden Experiments: The Science of Henry David Thoreau
Friday, September 25
Starts at 6 PM
Harvard, Science Center, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/robert-m-thorson-at-the-harvard-science-center-tickets-1996013701713

Harvard Book Store, the Harvard University Division of Science, and the Harvard Library welcome Robert M. Thorson—Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Connecticut and affiliate of the Transcendentalism Initiative at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School—for a discussion of his new book, The Walden Experiments: The Science of Henry David Thoreau. The presentation will take place in Hall D of the Harvard Science Center, located at 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge.

About The Walden Experiments
Reading Thoreau as a scientist for modern times.

Henry David Thoreau’s Walden stands as the foundational text for the environmental movement and as a model for the practice of nature writing. In The Walden Experiments, Robert Thorson tells the story of how, after several discarded drafts of social critique, Thoreau resuscitated Walden with a sharp swerve toward science. Thorson invites us to read—or reread—Walden to discover the observations, empirical thinking, and scientific explanations supporting this canonical work of literature. Chapter by chapter, he guides us through Walden’s relevance for such contemporary scientific concerns as climate change, ecological collapse, water supply, agriculture, artificial intelligence, and technology.

Thoreau's first “experiment” of living deliberately took place in a one-room house at Walden Pond from 1845 to 1847. This was followed from 1851 to 1852 by a little-known second experiment of trying to live deliberately in the midst of society as a sojourning scientist. Thorson’s account of a science-revitalized version of Waldenhelps us appreciate Thoreau's masterpiece not only for its prophetic, lyrical, uplifting, witty, and timeless advice on living sustainably, but also as a historic benchmark for anchoring our modern solutions. Exploring the science that underlies Walden enhances our understanding of the deeper meanings Thoreau draws from nature.

Bio
Robert M. Thorson is Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Connecticut where he teaches courses in advanced geoscience and science communication. During the Fall 2026 semester, he is an affiliate of the Transcendentalism Initiative at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. His scholarship bridges the intellectual apartheid between STEM science and the humanities. He has written for outlets such as The Atlantic, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, Orion, and The Conversation. In addition to The Walden Experiments, he is the author of Walden’s Shore: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth Century Science, The Boatman: Henry David Thoreau’s River Years, and The Guide to Walden Pond.

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22nd Annual Ikeda Forum: A New Vision of Global Citizenship: Reimagining Education in An Age of Division
Friday, September 25
7:00 PM (ET)
The Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue, 396 Harvard Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/22nd-annual-ikeda-forum-tickets-1997019483032

This year’s forum is called “A New Vision of Global Citizenship: Reimagining Education in An Age of Division”. We’ll have a panel featuring Dr. Timothy McCarthy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Harvard Kennedy School, and Dr. Gabrielle Oliveira from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The discussion will be moderated by Bhuvan Ravindran, a Nature & Climate Policy pro and founder of ARGO.

It’s a great chance to dive into fresh ideas about education and global citizenship, especially in these divided times. Free admission and a pre-event reception at 6:30! Hope to see you there!

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The 2026 Annual Environment & Spirituality Summit
Monday, September 28 - Tuesday, September 29
Online
https://aes-summit.org/

This year’s Summit explores the theme Grounded Resistance, with four sessions focused on how we engage the world from a place of deep grounding, collective support, and sustained resistance.

About the Host
Faith in Place is dedicated to empowering people of diverse faiths and spiritualities to be leaders in advancing environmental and racial justice, providing resources to educate, connect, and advocate for healthier communities.

Summit Sessions
Session 1
September 28th
11:30-12:30 pm CT | Zoom
Paradise is Now: Reclaiming Healthy, Grounded Faith in an Age of Divisive Fear with Dr. Matthias Beier
Register
Session 2
September 28th
6:00-7:00 pm CT | Zoom
Revolutionary Love and Grounded Resistance with Valarie Kaur
Register
Session 3
September 29th
11:30-12:30 pm CT | Zoom
Grounded in Earth’s Story: Mary Evelyn Tucker on Religion, Ecology, and Resistance
Register
Session 4
September 29th
6:00-7:30 pm CT | Zoom
Faithful Resistance in a Warming World: Bill McKibben on Climate, Courage, and Collective Action

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From Global Climate Vulnerability Trends to Policy Choices
Monday, September 28
12:00pm to 1:00pm EDT
MIT, Building E40-496, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge, MA 02142
And online
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeoQPscJUOuZkwwpEC5K2D66NWweORiYkFys-0UVoAbYvGSog/viewform

Climate impacts increasingly interact with geopolitical tensions and financial stress, and decisions made over the next few years will shape whether countries can build resilience in time. A single shock, like an energy price spike or a failed harvest, can cascade within months into strained foreign reserves, rising household costs, and delayed investment, with the first point of failure typically financial or institutional rather than technological. Drawing on Dr. Warner's extensive experience at the intersection of climate science and policymaking, this talk examines key vulnerability trends, and which financial tools, policy measures, and sequencing approaches can help when countries face simultaneous pressures.

Koko Warner, PhD, is Project Director at the Penn International Climate Observatory and former director of the Global Data Institute at the International Organization for Migration. At the UNFCCC secretariat, she managed the Vulnerability subdivision and supervised the loss and damage policy area. She is a lead author of the IPCC's Fifth and Sixth Assessment Reports and founded the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative. The International Council for Science named her among the top 20 women in the climate change debate.

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Policy Analysis at Scale: An Instrument to Evaluate Governance Proposals
Monday, September 28
12 – 1 p.m.
Harvard, Wexner 434AB (HKS Campus), 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
And online
RSVP at https://www.hks.harvard.edu/events/policy-analysis-scale-instrument-evaluate-governance-proposals

SPEAKER(S) Paulo Carvão, M-RCBG Research Fellow
Moderated by: John Haigh

Artificial intelligence governance is evolving faster than traditional policy analysis tools. Policymakers face a growing volume of bills, executive actions, and regulatory proposals across fragmented jurisdictions, often without a standardized way to compare their objectives, assumptions, or trade-offs. We respond to that gap with a transparent instrument for evaluating AI governance: a framework for assessing how a policy aligns with selected AI governance priorities. The framework draws on traditional policy analysis and computational text analysis.

This seminar will take place in Wexner 434AB for those with an HUID who wish to attend in person. Others may join us remotely via Zoom. Lunch will be served.

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Public Research Talk: A Transcendentalist Peace: American Pacifism from Lydia Maria Child to Jane Addams
Monday, September 28
12 – 1:30 p.m.
Harvard Divinity School, Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave., Cambridge, MA
RSVP at https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bpW6b8Lb0Ao79C6
And online
RSVP at https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_j0AY4o8xTXqWA0P_wHO_UQ#/registration

In 1839, abolitionist Lydia Maria Child called the first Peace Convention in Boston “unquestionably the greatest event of the nineteenth century.” “Posterity will marvel,” she wrote, “at the early adoption of such transcendental principles.” Seventy-five years later, Jane Addams honed transcendentalist ideas into a theory of pacifism that Child would have recognized—one built on moral self-reliance, faith in individual transformation, and a dedication to justice through applied democracy. These women's ideas, and the example of their lives, are deeply relevant today as we struggle, in a war-torn world, to imagine a lasting peace.

Lydia Moland is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Philosophy at Colby College. She is the author of Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life (2022), a biography of abolitionist Lydia Maria Child. Her writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and American Scholar, among other publications. She is also the author of books on classical German philosophy and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of American and British Women Philosophers in the Nineteenth Century (2025). She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Academy in Berlin. In 2025, she was a Fulbright Fellow at Freie Universität Berlin. She is currently working on a group biography of interwar pacifists, provisionally titled Pacifist Women at War: Four Paths to Peace.

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Local Food Systems within Just Transition Micro-Clusters with Thomas Froehlich
Monday, September 28
12:00pm to 1:30pm EDT
Location will be emailed upon registration
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSecKyxMYGzh42CqfuHEYDVASOyZciiG6l4DD7gzZQXhMQgMBg/viewform

Join J-WAFS for a seminar with Thomas Froehlich, a research fellow at King’s College London, on September 28, 2026, from noon to 1:30 p.m. ET. As communities grapple with a compounding "polycrisis" of cost-of-living pressures, fragile supply chains, and climate imperatives, this talk introduces Just Transition Micro-Clusters (JTMCs), place-based units that function simultaneously as governance bodies, planning methods, and development strategies. Local food systems are an excellent entry point for JTMCs, since food sits at the intersection of household budgets, infrastructure, and social wellbeing. The talk lays out a practical four-step planning sequence (asset diagnosis, community-legitimized visioning, roadmap development, and mobilization of higher-level finance) for embedding food interventions into just-transition planning. Drawing on cases from London, Brazil, and Senegal, the talk demonstrates how JTMCs can turn food systems into a concrete lever for building resilient, low-carbon, and equitable regional economies.

This talk is open to the MIT community as well as those from universities or organizations in the greater Cambridge and Boston area. You must RSVP using your organizational email address.

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Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism”
Monday, September 28
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Princeton, 300 Wallace Hall, Princeton, NJ
And online
RSVP at https://environment.princeton.edu/event/extraction-the-frontiers-of-green-capitalism/

Thea Riofrancos, professor of Political Science for Providence College, will present “Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism.” This seminar will be held in-person (PUID holders only) and available via livestream (open to all).

Will green capitalism save us from the climate crisis? “Clean” technologies and renewable energy are certainly growing sites of capitalist investment, with government policies playing a key role in making these sectors profitable. But the supply chains that produce the technologies pose vexing dilemmas for the energy transition. These dilemmas are most dramatic at the extractive frontiers of green capitalism: where the natural resources needed to manufacture electric vehicles and build windmills are extracted. In this talk, we will unpack these challenges through the lens of lithium, a so-called “critical mineral” essential for its role in decarbonizing one of the most polluting sectors: transportation. With forecasters predicting an enormous surge in lithium demand, exceeding existing supplies, Global North governments and downstream firms scramble to “secure” lithium, resulting in a new state-corporate alliance and the return of vertical integration. Meanwhile, Global South governments are attempting to leverage critical mineral deposits into sustainable and sovereign economic development. And, across the world, environmental and Indigenous movements contest the rapid expansion of extraction, defending ecosystems, livelihoods, and waterways already under pressure from global warming from a new boom in mining. It is in the play of these forces, unfolding amidst geopolitical rivalry and economic turbulence, that the energy transition will be forged. To conclude, we will explore the possibility of a less mining-intensive pathway to zero carbon transportation.

Riofrancos is a Professor of Political Science at Providence College, a Strategic Co-Director of the Climate and Community Institute, and a fellow at the Transnational Institute. Her research focuses on resource extraction, renewable energy, climate change, the global lithium sector, green technologies, social movements, and the Latin American left. She is the author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (W.W. Norton, 2025) and Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020), and the coauthor of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019). Her publications have appeared in scholarly journals such as Global Environmental Politics, World Politics, and Perspectives on Politics, as well as in media outlets including The New York Times, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, n+1, Dissent, and more.

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Kashef Chowdhury, “Meditations in Entropy”
Monday, September 28
6:30 PM - 8 PM
Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 48 Quincy Street, Piper Auditorium Cambridge, MA 02138
And livestreamed at https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/event/meditations-in-entropy/
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/kashef-chowdhury-meditations-in-entropy-tickets-1998429350985
RSVP does not guarantee entry, which is filled on a first-come-first-served basis. Doors open 15 minutes before the event begins, so be sure to arrive early.

Kashef Chowdhury has a studio-based practice in Dhaka, with strong emphasis on climate, materials and context – both natural and human.
About This Event
Since 1995, Dhaka-based architecture firm Kashef Chowdhury / URBANA has produced an astonishing collection of works of divergent scales, typologies, and contexts located in one of the most meteorologically challenging regions in the world. For this lecture Kashef Chowdhury will discuss some projects featured in the first full monograph of the practice: Meditations In Entropy. He will focus on works related to culture, history and climate change in Bangladesh, which are incisive, critical responses to varied issues and urgencies rooted in the belief that architecture must be a reflection of, and sympathetic to, increasingly fragile ecological conditions.

Speaker
Kashef Chowdhury has a studio-based practice based in Dhaka, with strong emphasis on climate, materials and context – both natural and human. Projects in the studio are given extended time for research so as to reach a level of innovation and original expression. Works span various typologies, from institutions and public buildings, to culture, education, sports, health, industry, religious, residential and climate-action projects.

Kashef Chowdhury won first prize in AR+D Architecture Award 2012 from the Architectural Review, London. He received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2016, Geneva and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) International Prize 2021, London.

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Future Energy Landscapes (FEL): a new toolkit
Tuesday, September 29
8 AM - 9 AM EDT
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/future-energy-landscapes-fel-a-new-toolkit-tickets-1996779977665

Join the launch of the new toolkit, helping communities explore renewable energy opportunities and how they could benefit local people.

Future Energy Landscapes (FEL) is a pioneering approach to community engagement, developed by sustainable energy charity, the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE). The toolkit has been created to make it simple for local authorities and community energy groups – or anyone interested in developing renewable energy plans or gauging local interest – to replicate the approach in their area.

This webinar will cover:
How to use the toolkit to run Future Energy Landscapes (FEL) community engagement workshops in your area.
Key learnings from delivering FEL in practice.

Who is this webinar for?
Anyone interested in running FEL in their area is very welcome to join the webinar. This could include local authorities, parish or town councils, climate action and community energy groups.

About this project
FEL starts community-wide conversations about renewable energy developments that could be owned by and benefit local people. It’s a bottom-up community engagement process, giving everyone the opportunity to share their thoughts about potential renewable energy plans. This ensures any plans or policies will be community-aligned and have social consent.
CSE has delivered FEL in over 25 communities over the last five years. This toolkit brings together the learnings from this work.

The project is funded by Energy Industry Voluntary Redress Scheme.
What if I'm interested but can't come?

We'll record the webinar and share the slides afterwards with everyone signed up, so please register for a free spot to receive those.
If you are having technical issue joining or during the webinar, please contact communities@cse.org.uk.

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How Big Tech Is Fueling the Future of War
Tuesday, September 29
3pm EDT [6:00 PM PDT]
Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California, Taube Family Auditorium, 110 The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94105
And online
RSVP at https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2026-09-29/sharon-weinberger-how-big-tech-fueling-future-war
Cost: $10 - $57

SPEAKER
Sharon Weinberger, Author, Valley of Death: How Big Tech Is Fueling the Future of War
Moderator: Zusha Elinson, National Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
In her new book Valley of Death, former Wall Street Journal national security editor Sharon Weinberger draws on deep, exclusive reporting to reveal how a new military-industrial complex is arising from the cradle of Silicon Valley, with vast implications for American democracy and the global balance of power.

Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Alexander Karp. These tech titans are fast becoming some of the most powerful figures in the realm of national security, with enormous implications for us all. As Weinberger reveals in this gripping account, the American military and spy agencies helped to create Silicon Valley as we now know it, and some of its biggest and most valuable companies today owe much of their success to the Pentagon and CIA. Beginning with the War on Terror and accelerating under Donald Trump, however, the old alliance between elected leaders in Washington and the unelected CEOs of Silicon Valley has grown increasingly uneasy as power has shifted to the private sector, and Big Tech exerts greater and greater influence over its old patrons. Companies such as SpaceX and Palantir, along with newer entrants to the field such as Anduril, are proudly supporting—and quietly shaping—U.S. national defense, whether by providing spies and soldiers with AI and cloud-computing tools or actual military hardware such as microwave weapons, hypersonic missiles, and advanced drones.

The implications of this historic shift, Weinberger writes, are poorly understood and fraught with peril. What happens when mercurial billionaires like Elon Musk control weapons and technologies that were once the preserve of the U.S. government? How will this new military-industrial complex affect the way wars are fought, or even which wars are fought? That is the urgent question before us today, at the dawn of this new era—and as Weinberger reveals, it is one on which our collective future might well hinge.

About the Speaker
Sharon Weinberger has been writing on national security issues for more than 25 years. She was the national security editor at The Wall Street Journal from 2022 to 2026 and has also contributed to The New York Times, New York magazine, and The Washington Post, among other outlets. Her new book is Valley of Death: How Big Tech Is Fueling the Future of War.

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Building What's Next: Global Development When the Model Breaks
Tuesday, September 29
5:30-7:30 PM | The Foundry, , 101 Rogers St, Cambridge, MA 02142
RSVP at https://bnid.wildapricot.org/event-6662652
Cost: $20 - $25

BNID's annual Global Changemakers Salon is back — an evening of conversation, connection, and community for Boston's international development professionals, researchers, and students.
Each year the Salon brings together practitioners and leaders from across Greater Boston to explore a timely theme in global development.

Whether you're a seasoned professional, early in your career, or a student finding your footing in the field — this is your space.

Admission includes light refreshments and non-alcoholic drinks.

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Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines
Tuesday, September 29
6:00pm
Harvard Science Center, Hall B, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sherry-turkle-at-the-harvard-science-center-tickets-1996244136951

About Artificial Intimacy
From the author of prescient best seller and classic Reclaiming Conversation, Sherry Turkle, comes an urgent warning about how our ever-increasing reliance on human-like AI chatbots is eroding our capacity for empathy, caring, and the very qualities that make us human.

If social media came for our attention, artificial intelligence is now coming for our capacity for attachment. Chatbots that speak to us in a human voice offer themselves as best friends, lovers, and psychotherapists. As of 2025, over 70% of teens and nearly one-third of US adults rely on AI for companionship and emotional support, with many preferring these chatbot relationships over human ones.

When we talk to chatbots in these roles, as intimate machines, we accept as sufficient what machines can offer: the mere performance of intimacy, empathy, and love. We begin to think that pretend empathy is empathy enough. We redefine human capacities for care, solitude, and intimacy in terms of what machines can do. Sherry Turkle, the psychologist who pioneered our understanding of human-computer relationships, calls the new culture of chatbots artificial intimacy, our new AI.

Through compelling storytelling, framed by Turkle’s decades of experience as a chronicler and analyst of digital culture, Artificial Intimacy evokes the seductive and beguiling nature of chatbots. They can organize our calendars, plan our travel, or analyze our stock picks, all with an efficiency that outstrips what a person might do.

And then, they promise to be more—to be our “perfect” companion. They will always be there for us, listen to us, and support us—and ask for nothing in return. But these intimate machines, warns Turkle, are producing a generation more alienated, depressed, and lonely than ever before. More than that, we become less equipped to reverse course—machine relationships do not offer practice for getting along with people.

Artificial Intimacy is unique in how it traces our new habit of talking to machines through the lifecycle—from children’s earliest attachments to how we face death. But technology, by offering to do everything, teaches us that we neither need nor have the capacity to take risks, have hard conversations, struggle through uncertainty or insecurity, or rely on our own faculties and judgment.

Turkle has spent decades studying how digital technologies isolate us from one another. Now, in her long-awaited follow-up to Reclaiming Conversation, she offers both a cautionary tale and a roadmap for reclaiming our humanity in the age of AI.

Bios
Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and the founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. A leading expert in humans’ relationship with digital objects, she continues to revolutionize our understanding of the role of technology on psychology and culture. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Alone Together, Reclaiming Conversation, and The Empathy Diaries. Turkle’s most recent book is Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk To Machines (Little, Brown September 29, 2026) and is available for preorder now. Turkle is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship, the Harvard Centennial Medal, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received a joint doctorate in sociology and personality psychology from Harvard University and is a licensed clinical psychologist.David Kaiser is Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and Professor of Physics at MIT. He is the author of several award-winning books on the history of modern physics, including Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics (2005) and How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival(2011). His latest book is Quantum Legacies: Dispatches from an Uncertain World (2020). Kaiser co-directs a research group on early-universe cosmology with Alan Guth in the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics — a Leinweber Institute (CTP-LI), and has also designed and helped to conduct novel experimental tests of quantum theory. A Fellow of the American Physical Society, Kaiser has received MIT’s highest awards for excellence in teaching. His work has been featured in Science, Nature, the New York Times, and the New Yorker magazine. His group’s efforts to conduct a “Cosmic Bell” test of quantum entanglement were featured in a documentary film, “Einstein’s Quantum Riddle,” which premiered on US Public Television stations in 2019.

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Author Talk: N.K. Jemisin on Revolutionary Ideas in Fantasy Fiction
Tuesday, September 29
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Central Library in Copley Square, 700 Boylston Street, Boston MA 02116
RSVP at https://bpl.libcal.com/event/16247689

Noted and award-winning fantasy fiction author N.K. Jemisin discusses her work and her 20-plus-year career that has been inspired by revolutionary ideas. N. K. Jemisin is a fantasy author and 2020 MacArthur Fellow. Since beginning her professional career in the early 2000s, her short fiction and novels have been recognized with multiple Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. Most of her works have been optioned for television or film, and collectively her novels, including the Broken Earth trilogy, have sold over two million copies. After twenty years working in higher education as an applied counseling psychologist, she “retired” in 2016 to become a full-time writer, writing instructor, and public speaker. Her speculative works range widely in theme, though with repeated motifs: resistance and oppression, loneliness and belonging, and Wouldn’t It Be Cool If This One Ridiculous Thing Happened. In her spare time she’s into tabletop and video games, biking, fanfiction, and urban gardening. She lives in Brooklyn with her son and two cats.

After the talk, N.K. Jemisin will sign copies of her books with our local bookstore partner, Trident Booksellers.

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All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump
Wednesday, September 30
6:00pm
The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/anthony-scaramucci-at-the-brattle-theatre-tickets-1996303674028
Cost: $13.59

About All the Wrong Moves
We’re living in an age of deep political anger and frustration. Where did it come from? All the Wrong Moves offers a new, eye-opening answer, rooted in history, business, and the author’s firsthand experience, that reveals the true origins of America’s current political crisis.

In All the Wrong Moves, Anthony Scaramucci charts how both political parties, over three decades, made a series of catastrophic decisions that quietly dismantled the system supporting the American Dream. First came Bill Clinton’s trade deal with China, which opened U.S. markets while abandoning American workers. Next, George W. Bush’s choice to wage war while cutting taxes, exploding the deficit. Finally, Barack Obama’s bank bailout, which saved Wall Street but left millions of ordinary families behind. Each decision deepened inequality, corroded trust, and fueled the anger that empowered Donald Trump’s rise and his ongoing assault on democracy and the rule of law.

From the trading floors of Wall Street to the corridors of Washington, Scaramucci has witnessed how money, ambition, and hubris reshaped American politics. A product of the working-class who rose to the heights of finance and power, he brings a rare insider’s perspective to how both parties lost touch with the people they once represented.

But All The Wrong Moves isn’t just about how we got here—it’s about how we get out. Scaramucci lays out practical solutions, including economic policies to rebuild opportunity for the working class and constitutional reforms to protect our democracy. It’s a sharp, surprising critique that cuts through partisanship and challenges readers on the left, right, and center to reclaim what the American Dream was always meant to be.

Bio
Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. He also hosts the podcast The Rest Is Politics: US. A graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Law School, he lives in Manhasset, Long Island.

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The Shoreline Is Moving. Should We?
Thursday, October 1
12 – 1PM
Tufts, Curtis Hall Multipurpose Room, 474 Boston Avenue, Medford, MA 02155
And online
RSVP at https://tufts.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_t_6oXRaRRUSOomB1brtoUg#/registration

Speaker: Kimberly Starbuck, A02, Senior Research Associate at the Urban Harbors Institute, U Mass Boston
As climate change drives rising seas and stronger coastal storms, communities are facing difficult decisions about where—and whether—to rebuild. Across Massachusetts and around the world, a growing strategy known as managed retreat is challenging the idea that every shoreline can, or should, be protected forever. Instead, it asks a difficult question: When is it time to move?

This talk explores one of the most controversial topics in climate adaptation: relocating people, infrastructure, and development away from areas at greatest risk. This talk will provide real-world examples that explain why managed retreat is gaining attention, the social, equity, and environmental challenges it raises, and how thoughtful planning today can help create safer, more resilient communities for the future.

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Innovating with Amazon: Six Months of Building and What's Next
Thursday, October 1
5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Greentown Labs, 444 Somerville Avenue, Somerville, MA 02143, USA
RSVP at https://luma.com/ckb3o0je
Donations accepted

​Join us to celebrate the culmination of Go Build 2026, a 6-month open-innovation accelerator with Amazon and the Global CO₂ Initiative (GCI) at the University of Michigan, built to accelerate collaboration with startups in the field of CO₂ utilization and valorization.

Specifically, the program seeks to speed the development and implementation of advanced CO₂ mineralization and carbonation technologies to decarbonize the built environment—both within Amazon’s operations and the construction industry more broadly.

At this event, the five participating startups will share what they learned working alongside Amazon and GCI, the collaborations they've accomplished throughout the program, and what's next for their technologies and their work with Amazon and GCI.

We look forward to seeing you at Greentown Boston to celebrate this milestone and the innovators behind it!
​Agenda:
Check-in and networking
​Opening remarks from Greentown Labs and Amazon
Startup introduction and presentations featuring:
Carbon Infuse (Brooklyn, New York, U.S.) develops a novel CO2 mineralization technology that upcycles industrial waste and flue gas into cheaper and cleaner materials for construction and manufacturing.
Carbon Negative Solutions (Portland, Oregon, U.S.) converts any region’s industrial wastes and minerals into carbon-negative cement supplements (SCMs).
Low Carbon Materials (Durham, United Kingdom) develops a proprietary range of carbon-sequestering aggregate-like additives for concrete and asphalt.
Revora Materials (Tappan, New York, U.S.) converts industrial residues and CO₂ into lower-carbon construction materials for cement and concrete production.
Neocrete (Auckland, New Zealand) develops an additive that makes low-carbon materials (SCMs) behave like cement, reducing the carbon and cost of concrete while making it more durable.
​Networking

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Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census
Thursday, October 1
7:00pm
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-3820

About Data Are Made, Not Found
An eye-opening story of the people who make the census, the United States’ largest and most consequential dataset, and the growing threats to their crucial work.

By many measures, the US census is the government’s largest non-wartime operation, and one of the world’s oldest and biggest data-making endeavors. The 2020 census required more than a decade of planning and technical work—not to mention managing nearly a quarter of a million temporary workers simultaneously—to collect data about the American public. That data was then processed to count each of 331,449,281 residents once—and only once—and in the right place. The operation is also one of the country’s most consequential. Census data determine how political power and federal funding are allocated. Census data make politics, and consequently, politics make census data. In this urgent book, danah boyd explores what it took for the Census Bureau to make the 2020 census, amidst a global pandemic and natural disasters, and while navigating political forces that constrained the budget, micro-managed the schedule, and attacked statisticians’ methods.

With rare insider access to the Census Bureau, boyd observed and interviewed hundreds of government civil servants who made the 2020 census. By documenting the perspectives of government workers, Data Are Made, Not Found provides a rare glimpse into what it takes to make democracy’s data. Each chapter reveals a different challenge—ranging from the last-minute fights about a citizenship question to the not-so-helpful help of well-intended stakeholders to avoid undercounts—and shows how civil servants responded to each problem, controversy, and hurdle. Boyd shows how many of the challenges that the Census Bureau faced in 2020 resulted from decades of political operatives, data users, and various stakeholders playing what boyd calls “Jenga politics,” weakening the administrative state for short-term political gains by removing support and adding more requirements.

Civil servants saved the 2020 census, but future censuses—and other data-making efforts related to elections, health, and the economy—are precarious. Boyd’s message is clear and compelling: protecting democracy means protecting the people and institutions that produce this data.

Bio
danah boyd is the Geri Gay Professor of Communication at Cornell University, where she works on topics at the intersection of technology and society. She is also the founder of the research institute Data & Society and the author of It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens.

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VthePeople: Amending the Constitution through Article V
Friday, October 2 – Saturday, October 3
Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Hall, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138
RSVP at https://secure.touchnet.net/C20832_ustores/web/store_main.jsp?STOREID=42&SINGLESTORE=true
Cost: $0 - $125

Article V of the Constitution offers two roads to amendment: through Congress, or through a convention called by the states. We have never taken that second road. Over two days, leading voices for and against an Article V convention meet to discuss that second road, the substantive amendments it might carry, whether it can be traveled responsibly, and what it may look like in the future.

This event is open advocates and organizers, public officials and practitioners, scholars and students, and the simply curious.

Registration & welcome
4:45 PM: Opening remarks
5:15 PM: Keynote address by Jill Lepore
6:00 PM: VthePeople Social reception (Full Admission ticket)

Saturday, October 3
8:30 AM: Breakfast & coffee
9:00 AM: Opening remarks by Lawrence Lessig and Michael Farris
9:30 AM–12:30 PM: Two moderated panels and a special guest interview
12:30 PM: Lunchtime fireside chat with Governor Chris Sununu and Lawrence Lessig
2:00–6:45 PM: Three moderated panels
6:45 PM: Closing remarks by Lawrence Lessig and Michael Farris
7:15 PM: Closing dinner with speakers and attendees (Full Admission ticket)

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Living Beyond Earth: Our Next Giant Leap
Monday, October 5
1 – 5:30 p.m.
Harvard, Knafel Center and Fay House, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
And online
RSVP at https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2026-living-beyond-earth-symposium

Human space exploration requires more than rocket science. To extend human presence into deep space and onto other celestial bodies, spectacular feats of engineering and technology will be essential. But to survive and thrive in radically different environments, we must also carefully consider how to develop sustainable habitats, just institutions, and healthy communities beyond Earth. The 2026 Gellert Family Science Symposium at Harvard Radcliffe Institute will bring together leading experts to explore the contours of a human future in space.