Harvard professor to speak about mass incarceration in America
Dr. Elizabeth Hinton of Harvard University will speak on “America’s prison problem” at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 21 at Powers Hall on Hopkins Ave.
The lecture titled “The Making of Mass Incarceration in America” will take place in the ballroom and is free to students and the public. A reception will follow in the Powers Hall lobby.
Hinton joined Harvard’s history and African and African-American studies departments in 2014 as an assistant professor.
Hinton has said her fascination of the past started at an early age.
“As a little girl, I used to ask my parents to tell me about what I called then ‘the olden times,’” she told Harvard Magazine.
Hinton’s research focuses on the persistence of poverty and racial inequality in the 20th century United States.
Her book, “From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America,” from which she will pull much of her material from, was published in 2017.
It details “America’s prison problem” using government archives and a flurry of Freedom of Information Act requests, tracing it back to the Lyndon Johnson administration during the civil rights era.
