The Poverty, Promise, and Possibility initiative from the University of Chicago represents a bold and timely effort to bring together the University’s scholarly resources on issues of poverty in new, more publicly accessible, and more socially relevant ways. The aim is to highlight the useable knowledge available through the University for the purpose of illuminating both the pressing problems of poverty in our area and the practical steps that local communities can take to address such problems.

This event features Earl Shorris, founder of the Clemente Course in the Humanities, the award-winning global program that uses the humanities in antipoverty efforts. A contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine, he has received the National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Clinton, and the Condecoracion de la Orden del Aguila Azteca. His books include Riches for the Poor: the Clemente Course in the Humanities, The Politics of Heaven: America in Fearful Times, New American Blues: A Journey Through Poverty to Democracy, and Under the Fifth Sun: A Novel of Pancho Villa.

Recorded Thursday, October 21, 2010 at the University of Chicago.