Events

*This is a simulcast event to be broadcast live on Zoom and also on YouTube and Facebook. A simultaneous French translation will be available on Le Monde.fr and on Zoom.

Are widening inequalities and the wealth gap at a tipping point? Join Joseph Stiglitz and Thomas Piketty in a transatlantic dialogue on the COVID-19 pandemic and global economic insecurities, racial disparities and protests, the weakening of democracy, and the U.S. presidential election. Their conversation will explore the implications of these converging crises and opportunities for change.

French journalist Sylvie Kauffmann will moderate the conversation in English, with simultaneous translation in French (available live on Le Monde.fr and at Zoom link). English and French language versions of the filmed discussion will be made available after the event at www.maisonfrancaise.org and globalcenters.columbia.edu/paris.

This event is co-presented by the Columbia University Maison Française, Le Monde Media Group, and Columbia Global Centers | Paris. Co-sponsors at Columbia are the Institute for Ideas & Imagination, the School of Journalism, the Department of Economics Program for Economic Research, the Institute for Policy Dialogue, the Alliance Program, the European Institute, the Committee on Global Thought, SIPA, and Columbia Libraries. 

This virtual transatlantic conversation on Sept. 10, 2020 is a preview for the inaugural Festival du Monde NYC with Columbia-Maison Française, which will take place at Columbia on March 12-13, 2021.

Follow the conversation on Twitter at @Columbia_MF, @CGCParisCenter, and @lemondefr. Register here to participate in the Q&A.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is an American economist and a University Professor at Columbia University. A recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979), he is a former chief economist of the World Bank and a former member and chairman of the (U.S. president's) Council of Economic Advisers. He is the author of numerous books and news articles. His most recent book titles are People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent; Rewriting the Rules of the European Economy; and Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited.

Thomas Piketty is a French economist who is Professor of Economics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) and Associate Chair at the Paris School of Economics. His international best-selling books include Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), which focuses on wealth and income inequality in Europe and the United States, and Capital and Ideology, published in English by Harvard University Press in 2020, which reveals reasons behind sustained inequality and why the politics of right and left are failing us today. He is also co-director of the World Inequality Lab and the World Inequality Database, and one of initiators of the Manifesto for the Democratization of Europe.

Sylvie Kauffmann is editorial director and columnist for the French newspaper Le Monde and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. Kauffmann joined Le Monde as Moscow correspondent in 1987 and later Eastern and Central Europe correspondent from 1988 to 1993. She worked in the United States, first as Washington correspondent and then, from 1996 to 2001, as New York bureau chief. Kauffmann was appointed deputy chief editor of Le Monde in 2003 and covered Southeast Asia as reporter-in-large from 2006 to 2009. In 2010-2011, she was Le Monde’s first female editor-in chief.