This talk is sponsored by the Department of Sociology, the Center for Organizational Research, and the UC Student Loan Law Initiative. Please RSVP HERE as space is limited.

Speaker: Charlie Eaton, Associate Professor of Sociology at University of California, Merced.

Date and Time: Friday, March 17, 2023 at 12:00pm – 1:15pm

Location: SBSG 1321

Title: Reimagining (Higher Education) Finance from Below

Talk Abstract: Contemporary financiers extract unprecedented wealth from a diversity of non-elites. When a broad range of these non-elites forge coalitions, they develop more innovative political strategies for just financial alternatives. Public universities and student debt offer powerful shared identities to mobilize such coalitions. In California, coalitions of student, community, and labor organizations have developed successful bargaining-with-bankers strategies to increase taxes on the rich for higher education affordability and equity. National coalitions of student debtors, racial justice organizations, and legal aid groups have crafted effective parallel strategies that seek a big bang of student loan cancellation, while also bargaining for more incremental debt relief. This talk compares the strengths and limitations of the two strategies for establishing tax and finance justice throughout the broader economy.

Speaker Bio: Charlie Eaton is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Merced, where he co-founded the Higher Education, Race, and the Economy (HERE) Lab. His book Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of Financiers in U.S. Higher Education was published by University of Chicago Press in 2022. He is broadly interested in the role of race and organizations in struggles for power and economic resources between elites and non-elites. He earned a PhD in Sociology in 2016 from UC Berkeley.