Zócalo Public Square Zócalo Public Square

It feels like it’s time for something new. Facebook and Kanye just changed their names. More than half of Americans want to change jobs, and one-third want to switch careers. Businesses are reinventing the way they operate. And social movements are trying to create new systems that are anti-racist and sustainable. Isn’t all this easier said than done? Even after confronting the challenges of the past year and a half, we are finding that our old ways are more deeply entrenched than we expected.

What do we need—individually and collectively—to start new chapters and rebuild? Which rituals and practices have societies around the world used to successfully start over? And what sort of new beginning does this current moment require of all of us? Artist and co-founder executive director of Homeboy Art Academy Fabian Debora, TransLatin@ Coalition president and CEO Bamby Salcedo, and UCLA distinguished professor and psychology department chair Annette L. Stanton visited Zócalo to explore the best ways to make a fresh start. This event was streamed live from the ASU California Center in the historic Herald Examiner in Downtown Los Angeles on December 7, 2021 and was moderated by Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

For a full report on the live discussion, check out the Takeaway: https://zps.la/33enFan



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Pretty much every dinosaur skeleton you see has been painstakingly excavated from rock by people with precision, skill, and creativity. What they don’t have are paleontology degrees, and what they don’t get is money or credit. In fact, fossil preparators are mostly enthusiastic volunteers who come from all different backgrounds and receive their training on the job. Their unsung work creates the foundation of scientific knowledge about life, environment, and evolution. This veritable army of citizen scientists has a great deal to teach professional researchers, who are struggling to connect with the public. Could studying and emulating the paths these technicians take to the lab help make scientific disciplines more inclusive? Why are fossil preparators outliers in serious scientific research? And might adopting outreach efforts akin to the glass-walled natural history museum labs where preparators work help build public trust in science?

University of Virginia social scientist Caitlin Donahue Wylie, author of “Preparing Dinosaurs: The Work Behind the Scenes” and a new essay on the topic, visited Zócalo to talk about the power of looking beyond Ph.D.s and publications to recognize and connect to all who contribute to scientific knowledge. This Zócalo/Issues in Science and Technology event was moderated by Issues editor-in-chief Lisa Margonelli.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

For a full report on the live discussion, check out the Takeaway: https://zps.la/3dFSlDv



Visit https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/ to read our articles and learn about upcoming events.

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Calls are growing for the dismantling of the meritocracy—educational systems and economic structures that claim to elevate individuals based on merit, but instead favor those with wealth or racial privilege. As elites turn against the very merit-based systems that elevated them, governments, corporations, schools, and other entities are extending old policies—like affirmative action—and embracing new initiatives for equity and inclusion. But as we rid our society of standardized tests, “gifted” schools and programs, and traditional corporate hierarchies, finding new methods of evaluation and promotion is proving difficult. What value, if any, do the ideas of merit and merit-based decision-making retain in this moment of reassessment? What were the origins and intentions of those who created merit-based systems for scholarships and federal employment, and how have those systems fallen short? Do today’s profound social inequalities reflect a fundamental failure of the idea of meritocracy, or a corruption of an ideal that needs mending?

“The Aristocracy of Talent” author and The Economist political editor Adrian Wooldridge, Columbia University sociologist Jennifer Lee, and Malissia R. Clinton, vice president, general counsel and secretary at The Aerospace Corporation, visited Zócalo to explore whether there is any merit left in meritocracy. This Zócalo event was moderated by New Yorker staff writer Nicholas Lemann.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

For a full report on the live discussion, check out the Takeaway: https://zps.la/3wX4oor



Visit https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/ to read our articles and learn about upcoming events.

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We are failing Americans without college degrees. Research shows that up to 30 million workers without four-year degrees are drastically underpaid, and have the skills to earn 70 percent more than what they’re currently making. What accounts for this failure of the labor market? One problem is that traditional resumes don’t show or verify the full range of a worker’s skills—including those gained in the military and volunteer work, not to mention family businesses and caretaking. But there’s a promising digital fix that could help: learning and employment records. LERs are digital profiles that allow individuals to document their knowledge and skills, no matter how they were acquired—and have the potential to transform hiring while fueling innovation. What is an LER, and how can it be used to record everything you’ve ever learned? How can this technology be designed and implemented to create more jobs with good wages? And what will it take to design and implement LERs that make the labor market fairer to all workers instead of reinforcing existing social, educational, and digital divides?

Workcred senior director of research Isabel Cardenas-Navia, co-author of a new essay on LERs, visited Zócalo to talk about reconstructing credentialing around a system that recognizes—and even encourages—non-traditional learning and diverse career paths. This Zócalo/Issues in Science and Technology event was moderated by Issues editor-in-chief Lisa Margonelli.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

For a full report on the live discussion, check out the Takeaway: https://zps.la/LERs

Visit https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/ to read our articles and learn about upcoming events.

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Over the past year, directors of cultural institutions across Los Angeles have announced their retirements, which means a new generation of cultural leadership is upon us. But despite a desire for change that seems nearly universal, new directors must still answer to many of the same funders and face the same pressures as their predecessors—to raise money or sell tickets, to scale up, to stay relevant—all while navigating post-pandemic reopenings and reckonings around race and inclusion. What does Los Angeles need from its new guard of cultural leaders? What obstacles do their institutions face, and how can these new faces surmount them? Will all of the city’s culture centers even survive?

California African American Museum executive director Cameron Shaw, Inner-City Arts president and CEO Shelby Williams-González, and MAK Center for Art and Architecture director Jia Yi Gu visited Zócalo to discuss the change they plan to be and want to see in one of the world’s most vibrant cultural capitals. This Zócalo/Helms Bakery District event was streamed live from Helms Design Center on September 29, 2021 and was moderated by architecture and design journalist Frances Anderton.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

For a full report on the live discussion, check out the Takeaway: https://zps.la/3FcbZn5

To merely open a bank account or secure a driver’s license, people around the world face one common barrier: paperwork. Americans, in fact, spend 11.4 billion hours a year on federal paperwork alone. Harvard legal scholar Cass R. Sunstein, former administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has a name for this kind of drudgery: sludge. Sludge, he argues, doesn’t just cost time, money, and dignity—it does an immense amount of damage to society’s most vulnerable people. Bureaucratic red tape—“volokita” as it’s known in Russian—hinders everything from gaining access to food to securing healthcare. How could less paperwork help the least wealthy, least healthy, and least educated improve their station in life? Have any countries or institutions figured out what it would take to make this happen?

Sunstein, author most recently of “Sludge: What Stops Us from Getting Things Done and What to Do about It,” visited Zócalo to talk about eliminating the piles of paperwork obscuring our path to a more equal world. This Zócalo/Pacific Council on International Policy event was moderated by New York Times assistant metro editor Nikita Stewart.


Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

For a full report on the live discussion, check out the Takeaway: https://zps.la/3tsXuWs




Visit https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/ to read our articles and learn about upcoming events.

Follow along on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepublicsquare
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