In the next event in the Museum of Science and Industry’s Conspiracy Series, political scientist Dr. Eric Oliver will discuss his research at The Revival (rather than on-site at one of the Museum of Science and Industry’s theaters) on the evening of Tuesday, April 23, 2019. Tickets are $15. Click here to buy them.
Eric Oliver, Ph.D., is Professor of Political Science at The University of Chicago. His books are Democracy in Suburbia, published in 2001; Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America’s Obesity Epidemic, published in 2005; The Paradoxes of Integration: Race, Neighborhood, and Civic Life in Multi-Ethnic America, published in 2010; and Local Elections and the Politics of Small Scale Democracy, published in 2012. According to the Museum of Science and Industry (M.S.I.), “His most recent book, Enchanted America, argues that the current divide in America[n] politics is not between liberals and conservatives but between ‘institutionalists’ and ‘rationalists.’”
He was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholar at Yale University from 1999 to 2001 and a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation from 2002 to 2003. Dr. Oliver also won a Young Investigators Career Award from the National Science Foundation. He is currently writing research papers on three subjects. According to his official biography on The University of Chicago’s Website, they are “public support for conspiracy theories, whether liberals and conservatives name their children differently, and conducting research on the biological foundations of political cognition.”
The M.S.I. previously screened the documentary Behind the Curve (2018), which is about the growing number of people who believe the Earth is flat, on Thursday, January 24, 2019 as part of the Conspiracy Series of events. The screening took place in the Giant Dome Theater (formerly called the IMAX Theater) in the Henry Crown Space Center.
“Discover Eric Oliver’s research into what feels like a rising tide of conspiratorial thinking and its impact on misinformation, science and society,” stated the M.S.I. “Participate in informal experiments as you ask yourself some of the same questions that Oliver used in his studies on conspiratorial thinking and see how your answers compare to others. Discuss the ways everyone thinks like a conspiracy theorist and what we can do to stop the spread of misinformation in an open forum.”
The Revival is a store-front theater, an improve comedy venue that opened in 2015. It is located in a strip mall on the north side of 55th Street between Woodlawn Avenue to the east. [An alley separates the building from the Chicago Fire Department’s Engine Company 60 firehouse to the west.] The address is 1160 East 55th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60615. This is two doors down from Jimmy’s Woodlawn Tap and two blocks east of Seven Ten Lanes, so if you plan to attend, I recommend eating dinner at one of those places. The doors will open at 6:00 p.m. The event is scheduled to run from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
In the Garden City 