The Spring 2021 edition of Political Concepts at Brown examines the present moment from the graduate student perspective. The conference addresses the crisis evidenced in the U.S. by the failure to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, sustained state violence against Black Americans, and increasingly active white supremacist movements. It wagers that graduate students have a distinctive political role as intellectual workers whose avowal of their lack of knowledge drives their will to generate concepts.

In an event that came about as the result of an undergraduate research project at Brown, artist Rayyane Tabet and curators Kim Benzel and Clare Davies will discuss the exhibition “Rayyane Tabet/Alien Property,” a project that engages with the story of the ninth-century B.C. stone reliefs excavated in the early 20th century at Tell Halaf, Syria, and their subsequent destruction, loss and dispersal to museum collections around the world.

Young people sentenced to life in prison often refer to themselves as Juvenile Lifers — and while many of them spend decades fighting their sentences, only some are ultimately released. Former Juvenile Lifer John A Pace will have an open conversation with Abd’allah Wali Lateef, Tamika Bell and Jorge Cintron about the fight to give juveniles a second chance at life and how they reclaimed their freedom after years behind bars.