Provost's Lecture: What If Everything We Know About Gun Violence Is Wrong?

by Dr. Jens Ludwig, Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor - University of Chicago

ABOUT THE SEMINAR: Drawing on decades of research and immersive fieldwork in Chicago, University of Chicago behavioral economist Jens Ludwig shows that most gun violence in America is not what we have long thought—and that the solutions can be simple, sidestepping the political debates that have hampered progress on one of the United States’ most intractable problems. The talk is based on Ludwig’s new book “Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence,” named one of the New Yorker’s Best Books of 2025.
 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Jens Ludwig is the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, Pritzker Director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, co-director of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s working group on the economics of crime, and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. He started the Crime Lab 18 years ago to serve as an R&D partner to the public sector to help solve some of society’s most difficult policy challenges. The Crime Lab’s work has changed public policy at scale in Chicago, New York and other cities around the country, with results published in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals across multiple disciplines and featured in national news outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NPR and PBS News Hour.

View the photo album here!