The Value of Diversity
Tuesday, October 27, 2026 7:30 pm – 10:00 pm CET/GMT+1Julie Johnson Kidd Hall - Waldstraße 15, 13165 Berlin
Why do we value diversity, and what kind of value is it? In their brand new books, Diversity: The History of a Wandering Value and The Diversity Principle: The Story of a Transformative Idea, historian of science Lorraine Daston and legal scholar David B. Oppenheimer answer these questions by tracing the lineage of the value of diversity in natural history and debates over academic freedom, in court cases and in displays of imperial power.
Drawing on their books, they will explore the changing meanings of diversity and the arguments that have been made it a value, both past and present. In a friendly exchange that welcomes disagreement, they will ask where the case for diversity is strongest, where it may clash with other values, and what its history can teach us about the contentious debates over diversity today.
In cooperation with Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin
Lorraine Daston is Director emerita at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Visiting Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, and Permanent Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Her work spans a broad range of topics in the early modern and modern history of science, including probability and statistics, wonders and the order of nature, scientific images, objectivity, observation, rules, and the moral authority of nature. Her most recent books are Rules: A Short History of What We Live By (2022), Rivals: How Scientists Learned to Cooperate (2023), and Diversity: The History of a Wandering Value (2026). She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Philosophical Society, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, the Leopoldina, and a corresponding member of the British Academy.
David B. Oppenheimer is a Clinical Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and Co-Director of the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law. He holds a JD degree from Harvard. In his clinical work he has consulted on over 100 discrimination and harassment cases in Asia, Europe, North America, and Latin America. He is the author or editor of ten books on US and global discrimination law. His newest book, The Diversity Principle: The Story of a Transformative Idea, was published in 2026 by Yale University Press.
Email: [email protected]