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PPE Events
Public Lectures and Seminar Series
The PPE Center offers three different venues for advancing important interdisciplinary scholarship and civil discourse: Janus Forum Lectures, Odyssey Lectures, and a specialized PPE Research Workshop. Our Janus Lectures feature two speakers with different viewpoints. These events are our largest, campus-wide events that are open to all Brown undergraduate students and the broader community. The Odyssey lectures are single speaker lectures focusing on an important new idea or book and often attract undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty alike. The PPE Workshop is a curated research seminar with invited scholars presenting cutting-edge research for feedback from our faculty, postgraduate fellows, and graduate students.
Upcoming PPE Events
Recent PPE Events
Gallery of Events

Dr. Heather Ann Thompson (University of Michigan) speaking at an Odyssey Lecture about her Pulitzer Prize winning book, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

Students at a Janus event

Students attending the Janus Lecture, "Socialism Now?" with Andrei Shleifer (Harvard University) and John Roemer (Yale University)

Students mingle with guest lecturers after the Janus Lecture, "Hip Hope: Should Artists be Accountable for Their Words?" with Michael Eric Dyson (Georgetown University) and Boyce Watkins (Texas Southern University)

Student asking a question at a Janus event

Students mingle with guest lecturer Richard Epstein (Hoover Institution) after a Constitution Day Lecture, "Was the New Deal a Good Deal?" (not pictured, Samuel Issacharoff, NYU School of Law)

Noam Chompsky (MIT) speaking at the Janus Lecture, "Thinking Strategically: Should the US support Isreal?" with diplomat Dennis Ross (not pictured)

Student speaking with Dambisa Moyo (Zambian economist and author) after the Odyssey Lecture, "How the West Was Lost"

Bill Krystol (founder and editor of The Weekly Standard) speaking at an Odyssey Lecture

Dr. Heather Ann Thompson

A student meets Bill Krystol after an Odyssey Lecture

Richard Locke, Brown University Provost and Christina Paxson, Brown University President attend the Janus Lecture, "College & Coal: Should Brown Divest" with panelists Bill McKibben (Middlebury College), Christian Parenti (CUNY), and James Rogers (Duke Energy)

Guest lecturers John Yoo (Berkeley) and Larry Cox (Amnesty International) speak at the Janus Lecture, "One World, Many People: Are There Universal Human Rights?"

Students speak with Glenn Greenwald (American journalist) after the Janus Lecture, "What if the US Legalized All Drugs?" (speaker John P. Walters, former Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in the George W. Bush administration, not pictured)

Joseph Carens (University of Toronto) speaks with a student post Janus Lecture, "Open Borders?" (David Miller, Nuffield College Oxford, not pictured)

Joseph Carens (University of Toronto) speaks with an attendee after a Janus event

Students in the audience awaiting an event

Audience at the Janus Lecture: "College & Coal: Should Brown Divest" with with panelists Bill McKibben (Middlebury College), Christian Parenti (CUNY), and James Rogers (Duke Energy)

Janus Student Committee member introducing guest lecturers at a Janus event

Students and faculty mingling after a lecture

Students speaking with Andrei Shleifer (Harvard University) after the Janus Lecture, "Socialism Now?" (John Roemer, Yale, not pictured)

Audience at the Janus Lecture, "Is Humanity Progressing?" with Paul Krugman (CUNY) and Steven Pinker (Harvard University)