Register to join on Zoom

Matthew Desmond's newest book, Poverty, By America, unpacks two major questions: Why is there so much poverty in America? and What can we do to eliminate it? The Economic Disparities Committee is inviting you to join us for an evening where we introduce the book and hear from Matthew Desmond himself during a video interview he did with the Washington Post. 

During the evening we will watch a video (approximately 30 minutes) that will provide a foundation of the ideas in the book. We will have time afterward to share impressions and discuss what, if any, next steps people would be interested in pursuing together. There is no expectation of having read the book or even of prior knowledge of the subject matter, only an interest in exploring these questions.

If you have any questions, please contact Abby Cohen at abby.cohen@verizon.net.

Matthew Desmond is a professor of sociology at Princeton University. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2010 from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he joined the Harvard Society of Fellows as a Junior Fellow. He is the author of four books, including Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016), which won the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, Carnegie Medal, and PEN / John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction. The principal investigator of The Eviction Lab, Desmond’s research focuses on poverty in America, city life, housing insecurity, public policy, racial inequality, and ethnography. He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, and the William Julius Wilson Early Career Award. A contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, Desmond was listed in 2016 among the Politico 50, as one of “fifty people across the country who are most influencing the national political debate.”