Thanks to the suggestion by classmate and Class Officer Tex Talmadge, Dartmouth Sociology Professor Brooke Harrington will be spending time with us in a Casual Conversation on Tuesday, June 28 at 6 pm Eastern. NOTE THE TIME. She is the “third horse” in our troika discussing aspects the Russian invasion of Ukraine, following Professor Emeritus Robert O. Freedman of Baltimore Hebrew University and Johns Hopkins University who discussed Putin and his history in the Middle East as a window into his thoughts and actions in today’s crisis; and the upcoming Casual Conversation guest, Georgetown Professor Caitlin Talmadge (daughter of the very same Tex), on the geopolitics of the war and the US military assistance to Ukraine.
Professor Harrington has expertise in the researching and analyzing the Russian oligarchs. Here is her essay in The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/russian-sanctions-olig... . She states, in part:
"I have spent the past 15 years researching the offshore wealth of the super-rich. In my efforts to understand how oligarchs’ wealth was hidden from tax agencies, divorcing spouses, and disgruntled business partners, I have been astonished again and again at how many oligarchs cannot seem to live without the splashy public display of their wealth, even when it puts them at risk. . . . As social scientists have argued for more than a century, the evidence is overwhelming that, beyond a subsistence level, people will fight even harder for status than they do for money. We see that fight now in the anti-war comments and peacemaking efforts of Russia’s elites, after just a few days of sanctions pressure. They’re behaving exactly as sociologists would expect when status is threatened among a group accustomed to impunity: They’re angry, and they’re anxious."
Professor Harrington’s Dartmouth website is here: https://sociology.dartmouth.edu/people/brooke-harrington . It contains links to both her cv and her personal website. If you click over to her personal website, you will find a useful section titled “Articles in the Popular Press.” The articles provide background to the views that she applies to understand the oligarchs in The Atlantic essay.
Please let me know if you wish to participate by emailing me at arthur.fergenson@ansalaw.com by the close of business on the Saturday before the Casual Conversation, to wit, June 25.
And as a special treat for those who are attending our 75th Birthday Celebration in Hanover, she will be our guest for lunch on Tuesday, June 21st at Noon.
See you all in Hanover for the 75th, and on Zoom for Professor Harrington’s Casual Conversation.
Arthur