What to See at Duke This Week
Kate Millett had a motto: “We have to dare everything… break every taboo.” That belief was inherent in her pathbreaking book “Sexual Politics,” but also in her entire life of activism and scholarship. That book put sexual relations at the center of the fight for women’s and gender rights, and it’s been there ever since, as evidenced by the month’s headlines about sexual harassment. Duke is fortunate to have her papers in the Sallie Bingham Collection in the Rubenstein Library. Millett, who died in September, will be remembered with short talks by Kimberly Lamm, Sylvia Herbold, Heather McGowan, Kathy Rudy, Naomi Nelson, and others. 5:30 p.m. Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, 153 Rubenstein Library.
Barney Frank may no longer be in the US House of Representatives, but he’s still fighting for the causes he supported during his three decades in Congress. He’ll discuss that career during a series of events at the Sanford School and at Duke Law. Expect to hear him say a few words about what he thinks about the current congressional proposals that would gut his signature Dodd-Frank Act, which placed restrictions on bank lending practices that were a factor in the 2008 crash. At Sanford, he’ll speak on "The Fight for a Fair Society: Is Pragmatism a Betrayal?" 6 p.m. Fleishman Commons, Sanford School.
The first two case histories of sickle cell disease appeared in the medical literature within three months of each other in 1910 and 1911. Historian Todd Savitt of East Carolina University will discuss the very divergent stories of the first two sickle-cell patients and their physicians, and how these stories were shaped by a racially divided America and a highly competitive scientific community. Savitt will also tell about his own "adventures" in tracking down the identities and backgrounds of these first two SCD patients. The talk is part by the Trent History of Medicine Lecture Series. 5 p.m. Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, 153 Rubenstein Library.
Jonathan Kozol’s activism in the 1960s convinced him that success in the fight for civil rights depended upon erasing the inequalities he saw in public education. He gave up a career in academia to teach fourth-graders in a low-income neighborhood of Boston. Five decades later, he’s still fighting over the same territory in education, and his most recent book explores how segregation is returning to America’s schools. His efforts have produced a National Book Award and put him in the middle of nearly every major controversy in public education. He’ll speak on “Savage Inequalities in the Public Schools of a Divided Nation.” 7 p.m. Page Auditorium.
Brookings Institute scholar Richard V. Reeves’ latest book, "Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust," takes a harsh look at the economic inequalities that are leaving the working class and poor behind in modern America. That message fits with the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity’s mission to explore issues of race and outcome disparities. Reeves joins the Roosevelt Institute authors of "The Hidden Rules of Race" for a free Cook Center conference discussing racialized health and wealth disparities. 9 a.m. James B. Duke Hotel.