Image - the speaker and her book cover
San Francisco

Joan Williams: How the Left Lost the Working Class

Buy Tickets

Not a member? Now is the time to join our community. Members get ticket discounts, special programs, early notice of big events, travel opportunities and more; plus, your membership helps sustain our nonprofit organization's work. You can become a monthly sustaining member for just $13 a month.

The moving force behind biasinterrupters.org (an evidence-based metrics-driven approach to eradicating implicit bias) brings her perspective to bear on bridging the divide between college grads and everyone else she says has been driving politics to the far right in the United States.

Joan Williams asks: Is there a single change that could simultaneously protect democracy, spur progress on climate change, enact sane gun policies, and improve our response to the next pandemic? Her answer is that changing the class dynamics which are currently dividing American voters could do just that.

Williams argues that liberals often inadvertently play into the hands of far-right politicians intent on manipulating class anger to undercut progressive goals. She says the process can be reversed by offering college-educated Americans insights into how their values reflect their lives, and how their lives reflect their privilege, while also demonstrating how working-class values reflect working-class lives. She says the far right connects culturally with the working-class by manipulating racism and masculine anxieties to obfuscate the reality that far-right economic policies often prove disadvantageous to the working-class.

Join us to hear her guidance on how she says liberals can forge a multiracial cross-class coalition capable of delivering on progressive goals.

Organizer
George Hammond
Notes

This program is in-person only. If you have symptoms of illness (coughing, fever, etc.), we ask that you either stay home or wear a mask. Our front desk has complimentary masks for members and guests who would like one.

Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California is a nonprofit public forum; we welcome donations made during registration to support the production of our programming.

A Humanities Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums.

Photo courtesy the speaker.

Commonwealth Club World Affairs is a public forum. Any views expressed in our programs are those of the speakers and not of Commonwealth Club World Affairs.

All ticket sales are final and nonrefundable.

Tue, May 27 / 5:30 PM PDT

Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California
110 The Embarcadero
Toni Rembe Rock Auditorium
San Francisco, CA 94105
United States

Speakers
Image - Joan Williams

Joan Williams

Sullivan Professor and Founding Director, the Equality Action Center, UC Law San Francisco; Author, Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back 

Moderator TBA

Format

5 p.m. doors open & check-in
5:30–6:30 p.m program
6:30 book signing
(all times Pacific Time)

COST

Members receive 30–50 percent discounts (not a member? Join)

In-Person:
$22 
$52 with a book