Boston College Front Row

Frances Fox Piven, professor of sociology and political science at the City University of New York, gives a talk based on her forthcoming book, Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). After recounting the current ills of a society biased toward the powerful, Piven highlights the thread of populist resistance in American history from the American Revolution through abolition to the civil rights era. Piven's books include, with Richard Cloward, Poor People's Movements (Vintage, 1978) and Regulating the Poor (Vintage, 1993); Why Americans Still Don't Vote (Beacon, 2000); and The War at Home (New Press, 2004). Piven speaks as part of the sociology department's Distinguished Visiting Scholars Series.