In partnership with the MAVRIC Project and the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, the Princeton Women's Mentorship Program is proud to sponsor a conversation regarding Professor Tali Mendelberg’s recent book "The Silent Sex: Gender, Deliberation, and Institutions" and its significance for both men and women on campus and beyond. The book documents the impact of women’s lower confidence in public discussion settings, and how the dearth of women’s numbers can inhibit women’s voices, but also shows how women can be empowered by simple discussion procedures. Professor Mendelberg will explore the implications of her findings for campus life and culture and moderate a panel discussion comprised of men and women undergraduates, graduate students and faculty. A Q&A and book sale and signing will follow.

Panel participants include  Dara Z. Strolovitch, associate professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies and affiliated faculty in the Department of Politics at Princeton, and Princeton students Gwendolyn Lee ’16, JT Wu ’16 and Ph.D. candidates Carl Adair and Isabella Litke.

Mendelberg studies inequality and politics, specializing in political communication, gender, race, class, public opinion, political psychology and experimental methods. Her earlier book, “The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality” (Princeton University Press, 2001), won numerous awards including the American Political Science Association's Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award.

Strolovitch teaches in the Center for African American Studies. Her research combines qualitative, quantitative and interpretive methods to explore the intersecting politics of race, class, gender and sexuality in a polity marked by enduring, overlapping and structural inequalities. 

Lee is a junior majoring in the Woodrow Wilson School with a certificate in Global Health and Health Policy. On campus, she serves as the Class of 2016 vice president, chair of the Princeton Premedical Society's Women in Medicine program and president of the Student Health Advisory Board.

Wu is a junior at the Wilson School with dual certificates in finance and East Asian studies, and promotes gender equity through numerous conversations with faculty, advisees and student peers - wrestling with the concept of gendered stereotypes and healthy masculinity.

Adair’s work centers on modernist poetry with a particular focus on the intersection of poetics, pedagogy and debates about "faithful reading" in 19th and 20th century Christianity. He has taught for the past two years in Princeton's Prison Teaching Initiative, is a steering committee member of the The Men Against Violence Resource & Intervention Community Project at Princeton and is a member of the Faculty-Student Committee on Sexual Misconduct at Princeton.

Litke concentrates in political theory with a secondary subfield in gender and sexuality in political thought. Her research focuses on collective responsibility, sites of public memory and the normative implications of historical authority.