Book conversation series launches with 3 notable authors

The online book conversation series, Academic Innovation for the Public Good, had a compelling January 26 first event with author Davarian Baldwin and is now accepting registrations to attend the February 23 event with Ronald Daniels, president of Johns Hopkins University, and the March 23 event with Sekile Nzinga, chief equity officer of the State of Illinois.

Daniels will be in conversation with Carol Quillen, president of Davidson College, about his book, What Universities Owe Democracy, which was written with Grant Shreve and Philip Spector. The hour-long free event, with time for questions from the audience, begins at 4 p.m. Eastern time (7 p.m. Pacific time) on Wednesday, Feb. 23. 

A month later, Nzinga, the former interim chief diversity officer and associate provost of diversity and inclusion at Northwestern University, will discuss her book, Lean Semesters: How Higher Education Reproduces Inequity. She will be interviewed by Natasha Warikoo, professor of sociology at Tufts University. 

More than 100 people joined the January 26 conversation to hear Baldwin discuss his book In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities. A recording of Baldwin's conversation with Michael Kahan, co-director of Stanford's Program on Urban Studies, is available (above) through YouTube.

Stanford Digital Education and Trinity College jointly organized the series in collaboration with  Bentley University, Brown, Dartmouth, Duke Learning Innovation, Georgetown University Center for Design in Learning and Scholarship, McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning at Princeton, Minerva, Northeastern University, University of Michigan Center for Academic Innovation, University of Missouri Online, University of Pennsylvania Online Learning Initiative, Stanford Humanities Center’s Recovering the University as a Public Good initiative and the Stanford Pathways Lab. The book conversations are free, and all are welcome.