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The killing of George Floyd in 2020 ignited an unprecedented outpouring of support for state investment in policing alternatives. In this presentation, Dr. Robert Vargas, University of Chicago, Department of Sociology, will share findings describing underestimated barriers to public safety innovation stemming from academia and philanthropy. He will also outline some preliminary results on the positive effects of social movement activity and policy learning networks for implementing policing alternatives like mental health crisis response teams and offices of violence prevention. This research, which will eventually become a book, argues that the fields of science studies and political economy offer untapped ideas for improving public safety.

Professor Vargas is a social scientist interested in research on cities, law, and race. His writing and teaching focus on identifying the political-economic forces shaping neighborhood conditions and city responses to social problems. His multi award-winning book Wounded City: Violent Turf Wars in a Chicago Barrio brought a political analysis to the study of urban violence by showing how ward redistricting shaped block-level violence in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago. His second award-winning book, Uninsured in Chicago: How the Social Safety Net Leaves Latinos Behind (NYU Press), is a longitudinal and intersectional ethnography of uninsured Chicagoans' experiences with the Affordable Care Act.

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The Norman Glickman Annual Lecture in Urban Studies is supported by a gift from the program's founder, Prof. Norman Glickman, his wife Elyse Pivnick, and URBS alum William Witte.