A Terrible Thing to Waste: Harriet Washington and guests

Environmental racism's toxic effects on marginalized communities. 

The controversial thesis behind the 1994 book The Bell Curve brought the topic of racial differences in intelligence to heated public debate. In A Terrible Thing to Waste, science writer and ethicist Harriet Washington dismantles the notion of IQ as an inherited trait, pointing instead to a combination of institutional factors that push marginalized communities closer to sites of toxic waste and pollution as the prime cause of such a gap. She explains why heavy metals, neurotoxins, deficient prenatal care, bad nutrition, and pathogens affect certain communities disproportionately and what can be done to counter environmental racism.

Washington will be joined in conversation by Nathan H. Lents, Professor of Biology and Director of the honors programs at John Jay College and author of Not So Different and Human Errorsand Dustin T. Duncan, ScD, Associate Professor in the Department of Population Health at the New York University School of Medicine and director of the NYU Spatial Epidemiology Lab. 

FIRST COME, FIRST SEATED

Registration does not guarantee admission. For free events, we generally overbook to ensure a full house. Priority will be given to those who have registered in advance, but registration does not guarantee admission. All registered seats are released shortly before start time, and seats may become available at that time. A stand by line will form thirty minutes before the program.

The Program Room opens at 6 PM.

ASL interpretation and real-time (CART) captioning available upon request. Please submit your request at least two weeks in advance by emailing accessibility@nypl.org.