Event Recaps

On February 10, 2026, Stanford political scientist gave a talk on his book Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency. He argues that Republican backlash to the progressive administrative state has motivated the party to seek a strongman presidency that governs unilaterally in defiance of democracy and the rule of law.

In this talk recorded at BESI on January 27, 2026, Boston University political scientist Erik Peinert explains the ever-narrowing group of companies that monopolizes American and international markets by dredging up the economic research, theories, and interests that motivated policy discussions at key moments during the 20th century.

Recorded at BESI on March 4, 2026, this talk with Princeton sociologist of science and technology Janet Vertesi summarizes her "Opt Out" experiments and the lessons for fighting back against surveillance capitalism.

Set against the backdrop of recent proposals by states to tax their wealthiest residents, this conversation explores how the “grand bargains” between the rich and the rest of us became embedded in law and civic culture, how they have broken down over time, and how a renewed interest in taxation might inform a political and regulatory agenda for the future.

Motivated by recent major governance problems and policy implementation failures in California, BESI assembled an expert panel of scholars and practitioners to explore the underlying causes of the disfunction and examine potential remedies.

In this talk, recorded at BESI on October 30, 2025, economist Cecilia Rikap explore possibilities and strategies for expanding digital sovereignty and putting technology at the service of people and the planet.

On October 27, 2025, Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Edward Alden visited BESI to share insights from his latest book, "When the World Closed Its Doors: The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Future of Borders."

In this talk recorded at BESI on October 21, sociologist Philipp Brandt shows how data scientists in the 2010s not only transformed familiar ideas into a new professional, but — for better or for worse — also devised the technical machinery for seeing the world through datasets.

In this talk, recorded at BESI on September 30, 2025, Cambridge researcher Luke Kemp explores the ways explore the ways growth-obsessed, extractive institutions like the fossil fuel industry, Big Tech, and military-industrial complexes rule our world and produce new ways of annihilating our species

In this second event in our series on democratic backsliding in the U.S., panelists from across the UC Berkeley campus touched on the weakening of Congress, Trump and the courts, the pressures on civic institutions, and the possible dynamics and implications of popular protest, among other urgent topics.

BESI associate director Amanda Behm reports from Paris on a timely workshop co-organized by BESI.

Senior researcher Samuel Trachtman reflects on a recent virtual convening with researchers and policymakers hosted by BESI.