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The Sum of the People: How the Census has Shaped Nations, from the Ancient World to the Modern Age
  • Date: Wednesday, October 28, 2020
  • Time: 12:00 pm
  • Location: Online

In April 2020, the United States embarked on the decennial population census. It is part of a tradition of counting people that goes back at least three millennia and now spans the globe. In The Sum of the People, data scientist Andrew Whitby traces the remarkable history of the census. Marvels of democracy, instruments of exclusion, and, at worst, tools of tyranny and genocide, censuses have always profoundly shaped the societies we’ve built.