Jelani Cobb: Three or More Is a Riot
New Yorker writer and Columbia professor Jelani Cobb presents a kaleidoscopic portrait of the turbulent past decade in American politics and protest culture.
Why we picked this
Cobb has spent the past decade writing about American democracy from the inside — from Ferguson to the Capitol. This talk promises the kind of real-time synthesis that only a writer doing the work in the room can offer.
Jelani Cobb is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a professor at Columbia Journalism School, and one of the most astute observers of American political life working today. He has covered the Black Lives Matter movement, multiple elections, the January 6th Capitol attack, and the ongoing shifts in American democracy with a combination of historical perspective and on-the-ground reporting that few journalists can match.
Three or More Is a Riot draws on a decade of this work to offer a real-time portrait of a country in turbulence. The title invokes protest laws that define a mob as any gathering of three or more — a framework Cobb uses to examine who has been permitted to gather, who has been criminalized for it, and what the record reveals about American democracy’s actual commitments.
Part of the Chicago Humanities Festival’s Lakeview Day at the Athenaeum Center for Thought & Culture.