Co-Authored: Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward

Summary

When you ask people about academic collaborations, Piven and Cloward is almost always the first one they mention. In this episode of the Co-Authored podcast, we look at the four-decade collaboration between Professors Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward. This collaboration is incredibly timely today, as protest and social movements are at the center of debates about racial justice and social equity. Piven and Cloward studied this together starting in the early 1960s and what they discovered about poverty, race, and social movements in the multiple books and articles reveals a lot about the way forward. During this episode, you’ll directly from Piven, who I interviewed at her home in Manhattan. She retired from the City University of New York Graduate Center several years ago, but continues to write. Richard Cloward passed in the early 2000s, but you’ll hear from him in a clip from the 1960s. You’ll also hear from Dara Strolovitch, Phil Rocco, and Mark Schmidt. There’s a little bit of Milton Friedman and Glenn Beck to keep things moving, as well. The episode was supported by the American Political Science Association, the New Books Network, and John Jay College, CUNY. It was edited and produced by Sam Anderson. I hope you enjoy listening.

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