“2020 compellingly reveals what the pandemic laid bare about our culture, our institutions, and ourselves.“—Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted
An NYU professor and the director of NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge, Eric Klinenberg recently sat down with us at the Lavin office to explore what the pandemic did to us—and how we can heal. Today, our politics are deeply polarized and misinformation runs rampant. Gen Z’s are losing trust in a system they feel let them down. Community initiatives that came together in the absence of government support are undervalued and underfunded, and our institutions haven’t stepped up to fill in the gap. If we want to overcome these challenges, we need to go back to the year that supercharged them.
“Crises allow us to see ourselves more clearly,” Eric tells us. “In a crisis, we learn who we are, we learn what we value, we learn whose lives matter.” We must work through what the pandemic showed us if we want to build solidarity, foster strong leadership, and face the next crisis when it comes.
His new book, 2020 (out now!), is “a gripping, deeply moving account of a signal year in modern history” (Pulitzer Prize winner Siddhartha Mukherjee). He follows seven ordinary people in New York in the midst of the pandemic—like the bar owner who slowly became radicalized by the lack of government support, and the Jackson Heights woman whose pandemic-era mutual aid network has become a free legal clinic for immigrants—to explore how we can cultivate resilience and community together.
A thoughtful and engaging speaker, Eric offers vital talks on how the lessons of 2020 can help us strengthen our democracy, giving audiences hopeful reminders of our shared humanity and practical strategies for doing the daily work of community-building. “Mutual support and connection is the best resource we have for getting through this on the right side,” he tells Lavin.
