Sarah Braka

There are about a million things on everyone’s mind during the COVID-19 pandemic, but one worry many of us share is that we are somehow falling behind by being home this summer. While not having an internship or a job the summer before your first year of college is perfectly fine—I did absolutely nothing but hang out with friends the summer before arriving at Columbia—being at home with nothing to do means that life can be a little uneventful.

During “Race, Caste, and American Pragmatism,” the first event in the second annual Ambedkar Lectures, a panel of faculty from various universities discussed the rigidity of the American social structure and how racial oppression in the United States reflects a social caste system.