Our theme Race, Capitalism and Democracy, speaks to the various crises that have so strikingly come to the fore this past year, here in the US and across the world.

We have been alternately devastated and heartened by what we’ve seen: civil protests over the repeated, now increasingly publicized police killings of Black people, as well as accountability being served to at least some of the perpetrators; the Jan 6^th invasion of Congress by election-result deniers, goaded on by our very own former President, but also a ground swell of bipartisan embrace of the fundamentals of democracy (for at least a moment); the passage of racist voter suppression bills, but met with business leaders’ public statements repudiating these bills, a charge led by Black business leaders; increased violence against Asian Americans, particularly older women, but also increased visibility for a minority that has long remained invisible under the guise of the model minority myth. To name just a few—all stemming from structural features and systemic pressures related to race, capitalism and democracy, our themes for today.

And of course, we are also seeing how these themes are intertwined this year, with the interdependence between business and society laid bare by the pandemic and the dramatically disproportionate effects of the death and devastation it has wrought on the poor, women, and other marginalized members of communities across the world.

We hope to host a thoughtful conversation about these themes, the crises we are facing today, and how we, as a community of scholars and thoughtful practitioners committed to addressing how gender, race, class, and other axes of dominance and oppression reproduce structural inequalities in organizations. To this end, we are excited to bring in the expertise of our esteemed panelists ( Professor Robert Livingston of Harvard Kennedy School, Professor Sarah Kaplan of The Rotman School of Management at The University of Toronto, and Professor Danielle Allen of Harvard University), all scholars with feet firmly planted in the worlds of both scholarship and practice, whose ideas have the power to transform the public discourse and the potential to transform the world.