Brains Uncorked by Coriolis: Inaugural Night
Join us for the first-ever Brains Uncorked, a live event series where each month three scholars share powerful, thought-provoking talks, each just 10–15 minutes long.
This isn’t your typical lecture. Held in a bar, Brains Uncorked brings ideas that go down smooth but stick with you while you sip drinks and contemplate. With this series, we aim to serve up big ideas with a punch: unexpected, provocative, and designed to challenge the way you think.
In this inaugural installment, three professors at local universities will share insights they've gathered from years of in-depth research on how race is shaped by and functions within American institutions: from schools, to prisons, to universities. There will be no slides or long lectures, just sharp insights, bold perspectives, and conversations that linger well after the last glass is empty.
📍 Tuesday, April 29, 2025
🕖 7:00 PM (doors at 6:30 PM)
🍷 The Nickel Mine – Santa Monica
🎟️ Free to attend, reservations encouraged
Reserve a table → https://www.opentable.com/r/the-nickel-mine-los-angeles
🎤 Our Speakers
Dr. Laura Chavez Moreno
“All schools teach about race. The question is how. “
Assistant professor at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Departments of Chicana/o & Central American Studies and Education. Prof. Chávez-Moreno works at the intersection of education, pedagogy, language, literacy, and ethnic studies, particularly Chicanx/Latinx Studies. She is the author of How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America (Harvard Education Press, 2025)
Dr. Brittany Friedman
"We were never meant to obey"
Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California. Dr. Friedman is recognized as an innovative thinker on how people and institutions hide harmful truths. Her current work examines this in the realm of social control, and the underside of government such as prisons, courts, and treasuries. She is the author of a January 2025 book titled Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons.
Dr. Donna J. Nicol
“The Real History of Affirmative Action and DEI"
Associate Dean of Personnel and Curriculum and professor of history in the College of Liberal Arts at California State University Long Beach. Dr. Nicol’s research focuses on race, conservative philanthropy, U.S. higher education, and the history of African American women’s educational activism. She wrote Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action (University of Rochester Press, 2024).