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Becoming Unpopular: Conspiracy and Political Struggle Today

AK Thompson presents, "Becoming Unpopular: Conspiracy and Political Struggle Today" Conspiring literally means breathing together. Historically, the term implied co-implications that were at odds with the oaths demanded by sovereign power. It seems therefore that conspiracy should be a central reference point for those committed to revolutionary politics. Nevertheless, the dominant forms in which conspiracy is encountered today suggest a repudiation of collectivity and collective action. Caught now in an interregnum in which the conditions that enabled the historical development of mass politics can no longer be presupposed, however, Thompson argues that revisiting the history of political conspiracy may paradoxically suggest a means by which those politics might yet be renewed. This investigation is part of a new book project entitled Becoming Unpopular, which is focused on the historical development and hidden promise of unpopular political modes including conspiracy, contagion, absolution, despair, and death. In each case, the designation “unpopular” signals both that which is socially maligned and that which advances a conception of “the people” at odds with prevailing orthodoxies. AK Thompson is a movement-based scholar, an award-winning educator, and the author and editor of numerous books including, most recently, Premonitions: Selected Essays on the Culture of Revolt. Alongside his scholarly contributions to journals like Social Movement Studies and Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, he has also been featured in popular venues including Boston Review and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Sponsored by the Society for the Humanities, the Institute for Comparative Modernities, PM Press, the Department of Global Labor and Work (ILR), the Department of Government, and the Department of History. Find more about the event on Facebook: Becoming Unpopular Free and open to the public, reception to follow

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Becoming Unpopular: Conspiracy and Political Struggle Today

Joint Labor & Public Economics Workshop: Matthew Johnson

Matthew Johnson, Duke Management Practices, Workplace Injuries, and the Effects of Government Safety Regulations (with Nick Bloom, David I. Levine, and Alison Pei) Abstract: Workplace injuries are a massive economic burden, yet they persist across a wide range of workplaces. Why? Reducing injury risk entails financial and opportunity cost, but it may also require adoption of management practices that are slow to diffuse. Linking confidential data from the Census Bureau with data on workplace injuries, we find that establishments with more structured management practices (monitoring production, setting targets, and establishing incentives) have substantially lower injury rates, a relationship that holds within industries and within establishments over time. We then examine how this variation in management influences the effects of government safety regulations on workers and firms. Enforcement inspections by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration reduce injuries, but only at establishments with few structured management practices. Inspections also lead to an increase in establishments’ use of structured management practices. Inspections have no detectable effect on establishments’ survival, investment, or productivity.

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Joint Labor & Public Economics Workshop: Matthew Johnson

Academic Freedom and the First Amendment: Academia as a Workplace

This event is part of Cornell's Freedom of Expression Theme Year and ILR's Union Days. UC Davis Professors Rana Jaleel and Brian Soucek will have a discussion moderated by ILR Professor Risa Lieberwitz about the implications of freedom of speech on academic freedom.
Constitution with flag and gavel
Academic Freedom and the First Amendment: Academia as a Workplace

Labor Advocacy Career Fair

Discover internships and full-time opportunities with labor unions, law firms representing unions and/or individuals, and other organizations dedicated to workers’ rights. The Labor Advocacy Career Fair (formerly known as the Social Justice Career Fair) is open to all Ithaca-based Cornell students and will be a featured event during the university's annual Union Days series, sponsored by the ILR School.

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Labor Advocacy Career Fair

Who is Paid a Living Wage in NYS? Examining Gaps and Modeling Alternatives Using the Cornell ILR Wage Atlas

Join this event to demonstrate the Cornell ILR Wage Atlas live. You will hear from Dr. Russell Weaver, the researcher who designed the tool, about the ILR Living Wage Atlas and the latest findings to come out of it. You will also hear from partners Yannet Lathrop, Senior Researcher and Policy Analyst for the National Employment Law Project (NELP), and Dr. Karen King, Executive Director of the Erie County Commission on the Status of Women, on how they use the tool. Come learn how you can take advantage of this rich data source, too.

A wad of one hundred dollar bills in a jean pocket
Who is Paid a Living Wage in NYS? Examining Gaps and Modeling Alternatives Using the Cornell ILR Wage Atlas

We Rise Evaluation Research Report Launch

The ILR Worker Institute at Cornell University is launching its report evaluating the impact of the We Rise Nanny Training on domestic workers’ workplace standards and their leadership development. The We Rise Nanny Training is a peer education, workforce empowerment, and workforce development program run through a partnership between the Worker Institute at Cornell University’s ILR School, the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), and the NDWA/We Dream In Black – NYC Chapter; Carroll Gardens Association; Adhikaar; Beyond Care Cooperative; Community Resource Center.

We Rise nanny training
We Rise Evaluation Research Report Launch

Unionizing the Ivory Tower - A Special Book Event with the author, Al Davidoff

The Worker Institute is sponsoring a special book event that should be of interest to union leaders and activists, social justice organizers, labor studies students, and everyone wishing to promote worker rights. Unionizing the Ivory Tower chronicles how a thousand low-paid custodians, cooks, and gardeners succeeded in organizing a union at Cornell University.
book launch
Unionizing the Ivory Tower - A Special Book Event with the author, Al Davidoff

Joint Labor & Public Economics Workshop: Guo Xu

Guo Xu, Berkeley

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Joint Labor & Public Economics Workshop: Guo Xu

Conference on Transnational Labor Rights in a Globalized Economy

Join us in Ithaca to discuss the challenges to workers’ power posed by global supply chains and trade agreements, and the tools devised to address them, including new international instruments and global movements.
Conference on Transnational Labor Rights in a Globalized Economy

The Left in China

Ralf Ruckus will present central arguments from the book The Left in China. A Political Cartography (Pluto Press, 2023): All over the world, progressive forces debate the nature of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). While some consider them to be socialist, others recognize the critical role of the current CCP government in facilitating capitalist exploitation and the suppression of social struggles. Often, little or no attention is given to leftwing oppositional movements and groups in the PRC. Since the founding of the PRC in 1949, changing class divisions have led to waves of social protests by workers, migrants, and women, which inspired several generations of leftwing opposition against CCP rule. The dialectic of social struggles and leftwing oppositional movements has shaped the history of the PRC, from the socialist build-up in the 1950s to the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, the democracy movements in the 1970s and 1980s, the resistance of the socialist working class against capitalist restructuring in the 1990s and 2000s, and the struggles of migrant workers and women since. This event is co-sponsored by the East Asia Program.

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The Left in China

Labor Economics Workshop: Melanie Wasserman

Melanie Wasserman, UCLA

Localist event image for Labor Economics Workshop: Melanie Wasserman
Labor Economics Workshop: Melanie Wasserman

The Takedown of Elon Musk’s $56 Billion Pay Package

Lead plaintiff attorney David Tejtel speaks on a failure of corporate governance and its legal remedy.
Tesla car charging
The Takedown of Elon Musk’s $56 Billion Pay Package

Graduate Conference: Agrarian Studies, Climate Change and the Future of Work

The future of work is hot. Literally. Unpredictable seasons, droughts, floods, warming temperatures, rising seas, and a host of other climatic factors are changing what work is, what it means, and what it does to the body. These effects are unevenly felt across geographies, forms of difference, and inequalities. The impacts of climate change – extreme temperatures and changing agricultural cycles - on agrarian environments demand new frameworks to analyze work in the agrarian present and future. We invite abstracts that conceptualize climate change as a problem of work. Rather than restricting a changing climate to new weather patterns, shifting topographies, and techno-fixes, this conference opens a conversation to think about climate change through other anthropogenic changes, such as sociopolitical and economic transformations. This graduate conference will bring graduate students across disciplines to speak on a variety of topics including agrarian change, urban and rural relations, infrastructural transitions, uneven geographies of risk, and the politics of scale and temporality. We invite graduate students to send abstracts of up to 250 words to hak78@cornell.edu by March 1st, 2024.

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Graduate Conference: Agrarian Studies, Climate Change and the Future of Work

Joint Labor & Public Economics Workshop: Francesca Truffa

Francesca Truffa, Stanford

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Joint Labor & Public Economics Workshop: Francesca Truffa

Labor Economics Workshop: Trevon Logan

Trevon Logan, Ohio State

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Labor Economics Workshop: Trevon Logan

Joint Labor & Public Economics Workshop: Edoardo Teso

Edoardo Teso, Northwestern

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Joint Labor & Public Economics Workshop: Edoardo Teso