The inaugural 2015 UBC Lind Initiative, hosted by the Liu Institute for Global Issues, examines the far-reaching effects of inequality. A speaker series led by economist Joseph Stiglitz and featuring Jill Abramson, Teju Cole, Jeffrey Sachs and Elizabeth May was held in the Fall Term of 2015, while a series of essays, analysis and feature stories ran concurrently on OpenCanada.org.
Along with the series, Taylor Owen led a seminar class exploring the topic of inequality through the work of Stiglitz and the other guests. The seminar was by application, and was made up of 27 interdisciplinary graduate and undergraduate students. Over the term, they prepared six explainers on topics relevant to the inequality debate, ranging from lessons learned from South Africa’s Marikana massacre to the link between inequality and climate change. These were presented to Joseph Stiglitz on his final visit to campus and are presented below.