Clark Kerr Lectures

2012 Kerr Lectures:
Neil Smelser

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CSHE > Events > Clark Kerr Lectures > 2012 Kerr Lectures: Neil Smelser

Neil Smelser is a University Professor Emeritus of Sociology for the University of California. His distinguished career has been entirely at the Berkeley campus except for a period in which he was Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. His research has focused on what he calls the "macroscopic social structural level" of social life, including economic sociology, social change, social movements, and the sociology of education. He is also a trained psychoanalyst. He is well recognized as an observer of higher education. His most recent book, published by the University of California Press in 2010, is “Reflections on the University of California: From the Free Speech Movement to the Global University”.

Smelser is a former president of the American Sociological Association, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Society. He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1958 and has authored eighteen books, including “Theory of Collective Behavior”.

"Higher Education: The Play of Continuity and Crisis"

Lecture 1

"Dynamics of American Universities"
January 24, 2012 4 - 5:30 PM
Berkeley Art Museum Auditorium (lower floor)
- Watch this lecture | - Read the paper

Lecture 2

"The Dynamics Ramify: Academic Politics, Conflict and Inequalities"
January 31, 2012 4 - 5:30 PM
Berkeley Art Museum Auditorium (lower floor)
- Watch this lecture

Lecture 3

"Contemporary Trends: Diagnoses and Conditional Predictions"
February 7, 2012 4 - 5:30 PM
Berkeley Art Museum Auditorium (lower floor)
- Watch this lecture

February 14, 2012 4-5:30pm
302 Highlander Union Building
UC Riverside
See video of Feb. 7 for context of Lecture 3