Dr. Russell M. Jeung
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
Dr. Russell M. Jeung, professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University and a leading sociologist of race, religion, and social movements, was named one of in recognition of his work launching Stop AAPI Hate is a U.S.-based coalition dedicated to fighting racism and discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. As the nation’s largest reporting center tracking anti-AAPI hate acts, the coalition works to create a safer, more equitable future for all. Jeung, who learned to integrate social activism and faith as a community activist in...
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Gary Dorrien Forum
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
Gary Dorrien, the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University, is the author of 24 books and more than 300 articles that range across the fields of social ethics, philosophy, theology, political economics, social and political theory, religious history, cultural criticism, and intellectual history. Social critic Michael Eric Dyson called him: “the greatest theological ethicist of the twenty-first century, our most compelling political theologian, and one of the most gifted historians of ideas in the...
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Crystal Williams Forum
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
Crystal Williams – writer, poet, advocate, leader, and President of the Rhode Island School of Design – believes that education, art and design, and commitments to equity and justice are essential to transforming our society. For more than two decades, her work to elevate and amplify the multiplicity of human experience in higher education has galvanized the imagination about who we have been and who we can become. In her inaugural address, she asked: “Can you imagine a single national or international movement in which the arts were not a motivating and defining...
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Malcolm Harris Forum
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
Malcolm Harris Forum Grace Cathedral, San Francisco Just as humans have caused climate change, we hold the power to avert a climate apocalypse, but that will only happen through collective political action. In , bestselling author Malcolm Harris cuts through the noise and gets real about our remaining options for saving the world. Harris outlines the three strategies—progressive, socialist, and revolutionary—that have any chance of succeeding, while also revealing that none of them can succeed on their own. is a vital and...
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Bishop Budde Conversation
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
Mariann Edgar Budde is the bishop and spiritual leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C., and the Washington National Cathedral. On January 21, 2025, many Americans were introduced to Bishop Budde thanks to what The New York Times called “an extraordinary act of public resistance.” During her prayer service for Donald J. Trump’s second inauguration, Bishop Budde addressed the president directly, imploring him “to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now,” from those who are part of the LGBTQ+ community, to immigrants and refugees. But...
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Yuria Celidwen Forum
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
How do we cultivate collective flourishing? When facing the monumental challenges of our world, we often end up disconnecting to focus on our mental health. Dr. Yuria Celidwen explains this focus on our state of mind alone is precisely why so many of us struggle to flourish. “What’s been overlooked is the Indigenous perspective of relationality,” she says. “It is the understanding that happiness is only possible in community, when we cultivate our relationships toward all kin, from human to more-than-human, and our living Earth.” Dr. Celidwen’s research shows the...
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Shelia Warren Forum
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco The internet is broken, and it’s urgent that we fix it. We can – and must – do more to safeguard the health and well-being of our children, our democracy, and our society as a whole. Project Liberty is stitching together an ecosystem of technologists, academics, policymakers, and citizens committed to building a better internet—where the data is ours to manage, the platforms are ours to govern, and the power is ours to reclaim. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Sheila Warren, Chief Strategy and...
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Conversation with Nico Lang on American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
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Tom Steyer Forum
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
Every day the news is filled with stories of extreme weather that threatens our cities, our health, our futures: tornadoes wiping out whole communities; droughts that ignite catastrophic wildfires; storms flooding roads and destroying infrastructure; rising water levels that jeopardize entire nations; new climate-related diseases that threaten our health. Just as World War II raised an existential threat that united Americans in a common cause, the dangers of climate change are similarly challenging all of our previously held notions of the future—and our only hope is to unite together to...
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Amy-Jill Levine Forum
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
In her book Jesus For Everyone, Not Just Christians renowned biblical scholar and author Amy-Jill Levine uses stories told by and about Jesus to address the issues dividing us today: economics, family values, the legacy of slavery, nationalism, healthcare, and politics. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Dr. Levine about why Jesus’s historic and cultural influence makes him fascinating, provocative, and relevant for everyone, not only Christians. Recorded on April 12, 2025. Give to Grace You can help us bring the arts to life at...
info_outlineFrom the acclaimed author of Dog Whistle Politics, Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America is an essential road map to neutralizing the role of racism as a divide-and-conquer political weapon and to building a broad multiracial progressive future.
“Ian Haney López has broken the code on the racial politics of the last fifty years.”―Bill Moyers
In 2014, Ian Haney López in Dog Whistle Politics, named and explained the coded racial appeals exploited by right-wing politicians over the last half century―and thereby anticipated the 2016 presidential election. Now the country is heading into what will surely be one of the most consequential elections ever—again — with the Right gearing up to exploit racial fear-mongering to divide and distract, and the Left splintered over the next step forward. Some want to focus on racial justice head-on; others insist that a race-silent focus on class avoids alienating white voters.
Can either approach―race-forward or colorblind―build the progressive supermajorities necessary to break political gridlock and fundamentally change the country’s direction?
Over two years, Haney López collaborated with a research team of union activists, racial justice leaders, communications specialists, and pollsters. Based on conversations, interviews, and surveys with thousands of people all over the country, the team found a way forward.
By merging the fights for racial justice and for shared economic prosperity, they were able to build greater enthusiasm for both goals―and for the cross-racial solidarity needed to win elections. What does this mean? It means that neutralizing the Right’s political strategy of racial division is possible, today. And that’s the key to everything progressives want to achieve.
Two days before the Presidential Primary Election, join Grace Cathedral Trustee Tobias Keller for a conversation with Haney López about the upcoming political season and the larger fight to build racial justice and shared economic prosperity for all of us.
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About the Guest
Ian Haney López is a law professor at UC Berkeley who studies racism. His focus for the last decade has been on the use of racism as a class weapon in electoral politics, and how to respond. In Dog Whistle Politics (2014), he detailed the fifty-year history of coded racism in American politics. Ian has since actively promoted the idea of a race-class fusion as the basis for a multi-racial progressive majority. He co-chaired the AFL-CIO’s Advisory Council on Racial and Economic Justice, along with Dorian Warren and Ana Avendaño, and founded the Race-Class Narrative Project, along with Anat Shenker-Osorio and Heather McGhee. In his latest book, Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America (2019), Ian explains Trump’s complex relationship with dog whistling and further develops the race-class response. Ian is the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Public Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published four books and two anthologies, and has been a visiting professor at Yale, New York University, and Harvard. He lives in Richmond, California.
About the Moderator
Tobias Keller counsels clients in a variety of industries dealing with financial distress, advising on dislocations arising from excessive leverage, uncontrolled litigation or unanticipated employee or vendor problems, and the governance questions that arise in connection with those challenges. He regularly lectures for organizations on governance, distressed mergers and acquisitions and various restructuring topics. He is a fellow in the American College of Bankruptcy and has been recognized as a leading lawyer in publications including Chambers USA. He is the Vice Chair of the Grace Cathedral Board of Trustees.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum.