On February 3rd, 2022, Social Science Matrix and the Center for Studies in Higher Education hosted an online “Author Meets Critics” panel discussion focused on the book, Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of Financiers in US Higher Education, by Charlie Eaton, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Merced.

Elite colleges have long played a crucial role in maintaining social and class status in America while public universities have offered a major stepping-stone to new economic opportunities. However, as Eaton reveals in his book, finance has played a central role in the widening inequality in recent decades, both in American higher education and in American society at large. 

In this recording, Professor Eaton, who earned his PhD from the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, was joined in conversation by Emmanuel Saez, Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Equitable Growth at UC Berkeley, and Jonathan Glater, Professor of Law at the UC Berkeley School of Law. The panel was moderated by Jennifer Johnson-Hanks, Executive Dean of the UC Berkeley Division of Letters & Science.

A video of this panel is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/tag/watch/.